STUDIES ON THE SECOND PART

OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH

 SUPPLE M ENT S
TO

VETUS TESTAMENTUM
EDITED BY

THE BOARD OF THE QUARTERLY

G. W. ANDERSON - P. A. H. DE BOER - G. R. CASTELLINO

HENRY CAZELLES - E. HAMMERSHAIMB - H. G. MAY
w. ZIMMERLI

VOLUME XIV

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LEIDEN
E. J. BRILL
1967
STUDIES ON THE SECOND PART
OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH

THE SO-CALLED "SERVANT OF THE LORD"

AND "SUFFERING SERVANT"
IN SECOND ISAIAH
BY

HARRY M. ORLINSKY

ISAIAH 40-66
A STUDY OF THE TEACHING OF THE
SECOND ISAIAH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
BY

NORMAN H. SNAITH

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LEIDEN
E. J. BRILL
1967
 Copyright 1967 by E. ,. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or
any other means without written permission from the publisher
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
 THE SO-CALLED "SERVANT OF THE LORD"
AND "SUFFERING SERVANT" IN SECOND ISAIAH

BY

HARRY M. ORLINSKY
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introductory Statement . . . . . . . . . . 3
I. The Biblical Term "Servant" in relation to the Lord 7
II. The So-Called "Servant of the Lord" Sections in Second
Isaiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
III. The So-Called "Suffering Servant" and "Vicarious Sufferer"
in Isaiah 53. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
A Do Isa. 52.13-15 and 53.1-12 Really Constitute a Single
Unit, with but One Servant Involved? . . . . . . . 17
B Is the Subject of Isa. 53 an Individual Person or the
People Israel? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
C Vicarious Suffering in Isa. 53 - a Theological and
Scholarly Fiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
D The "Suffering Servant" in Isa. 53-a Theological and
Scholarly Fiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
E Some Alleged Ancient Near Eastern Parallels to Isa. 53 63
F The Christian Origin of "Suffering Servant" and
"Servant of the Lord" as Technical Terms. 66
IV. The Identity of the "Servant" in Second Isaiah 75
A 42.1 ff. 75
B 49.1-6. 79
C 50.4-9. 89
D 53.1-12 92

Appendix: "A Light of Nations" and "A Covenant of People" 97

Conclusions . 118
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . 119
Index of Biblical and other References . 125
Index of Authors and Subjects . . . . 128
 INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

"The Servant of the Lord" (;":1' i:!:s7) has long been a technical
term used universally by biblical scholars to designate the "Servant"
mentioned or implied in four major sections in Second Isaiah:
42.1 ff.; 49.1 ff.; 50.4 ff.; and 52.13-53.12.
There are a number of biblical concepts that are of prime im-
portance to the modern student of the Bible but which, it would seem
to me, were actually non-existent, or were only of the slightest
significance, in biblical times, when the inhabitants of the land of
Israel were in the process of creating what later became Sacred
Scripture. Among these, apparently only alleged!J biblical concepts
are the existence of a "soul" (the traditional, but incorrect translation
of Hebrew nifesh), the "virginal" character of the (almdh in Isaiah 7.14,
the prophets' hostile attitude toward sacrifice in the worship of the
Lord, the international outlook of the biblical writers (including, or
especially, the prophets)-and the "Servant of the Lord" in Second
Isaiah, above all, the "Servant" in 52.13-53.12, as the "Suffering
Servant" par excellence, who, innocent of sin, suffered vicariously in
order that others, guilty of sin and hence deserving of punishment,
might thereby be atoned for and spared the punishment.
For history is full of the commentary, and supercommentary, of
eisegesis grafted upon the original exegesis which differed from it
altogether; but it is one of the primary tasks of the historian to remove
the layers and crust of subsequent explanation and distortion, to
reveal the authentic statement set forth by the original author.
This is not a task easily accomplished, and there is little reason to
believe that the immediate future will see real advance in this direction.
Already three decades ago HENRY J. CADBURY delivered a courageous-
ly forthright and pertinent Presidential Address to the Society of
Biblical Literature on "Motives of Biblical Scholarship" (journal of
Biblical Literature, 56 [1937], 1-16). In his searching analysis of modern
Bible study, CADBURY noted especially (pp. 10-12) three "besetting
sins of our present procedure: 1. One is an Athenian-like craving for
something new. .. 2. Another bias of our procedure is the over-
ready attempt to modernize Bible times. This tendency ... arises partly
from taking our own mentality as a norm and partly from a desire to
interpret the past for its present values ... The modernizing is in many
4 H. M. ORLINSKY

cases ... due to an even less pardonable defect, the overzealous desire
to utilize our study for practical ends ... 3. A third defect ... arises
not from a modernizing but from a conservative tendency. When new
conceptions force us from old positions we substitute for the old
positions imitations or subterfuges which are no better supported
than their predecessors but which we hope are less vulnerable ... The
history of Biblical scholarship is marred by the too fond clinging to
the debris of exploded theories. We are afraid to follow the logic of
our own discoveries and insist that we are retaining the old values
under a new name ... "
In my chapter on "Old Testament Studies" (pp. 51-109) for the
volume on Religion in the series The Princeton Studies: Humanistic
Scholarship in America (Prentice-Hall, 1956), I wrote (in § 7, Biblical
Theology), " .. .It is one thing for a scholar to devote his talents to
the detailed study of the Old Testament in its historical development
during the second and first millennia B.C., or else to specialize in the
study of our own twentieth century society; it is something else
again, however, for the same scholar to attempt scientific conquest of
these two distinct areas of research. Such scholars, as put recently
by someone, 'tend often to mix together scholarship and apolo-
getics' ... Clearly, until the student of biblical theology learns to deal
with his data as critically as the student of ancient Greek, or Roman,
or Assyrian or Egyptian religion does, he can hardly expect his studies
to achieve, validity in scholarly circles ... " (pp. 77-79); cf. p. vii of
(General Editor) RICHARD SCHLATTER'S "Foreword".
Ever young in spirit, Prof. CADBURY has returned to this central
theme in a recent article on "Gospel Study and Our Image of Early
Christianity" Uournal of Biblical Literature, 83 [1964], 139-145), where
he deplores the fact "that much in our current image of early Chris-
tians is reflected from our own traditions and interests, more than from
the early Christian documents themselves," and closes with the
exhortation "to challenge where challenge is needed the image of
early Christianity that is sometimes read into as well as out of [italics
ours] the gospels." Our present essay will have much to say about
"eisegesis" as distinct from "exegesis". In this connection, ERWIN
R. GOODENOUGH'S essay on "The Bible as Product of the Ancient
World" and MORTON S. ENSLIN'S essay on "Biblical Criticism and
its Effect on Modern Civilization"-respectively chapters I (pp. 1-19)
and IV (30-44) in Five Esscrys on the Bible (American Council of Learned
Societies, New York, 1960)-are pertinent reading.
 INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 5

The present study is part of a major work on some biblical concepts

in their historical development, tentatively titled The Hebrew Cove-
nant. A much shorter and less technical version of this study, under the
title of The So-Called "Suffering Servant" in Isaiah 53 constituted the
Goldenson Lecture of 1964 (49 pp.), delivered April 22,1964, on the
Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion and published under the terms of the Samuel H. Goldenson
Lectureship established by Temple Emanu-EI of New York City.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE BIBLICAL TERM "SERVANT"

IN RELATION TO THE LORD

The dominant term in the Bible for Israel in relation to God is

<ebed. This is not surprising in view of the fact that slavery was one
of the integral elements in the agricultural and commercial activities
of biblical Israel, as it was of Ancient Near Eastern society generally.!)
With Israel alone did God enter into a covenant, exactly as it was
with God alone that Israel made a pact. Accordingly, it is virtually
only the Israelites as a people, or individual Israelites, who are desig-
nated in the Bible as the <ebed of the Lord, as God's loyal follower.
Specifically, the individual "servants" «abadim) of God are the
patriarchs, Moses (God's individual <ebed par excellence; see below),
Caleb (who alone, with Joshua, gave a favorable report on the pos-
sibility of conquering Canaan, with full confidence in God; Num.
14.24), Joshua (God's chosen successor to Moses and conqueror of
Canaan), David (founder of Israel's Royal Dynasty and God's favorite
king), Hezekiah (II Chron. 32.16), Eliakim (Isa. 22.20), and Zerub-
babel (Hag. 2.23)-all three monarchs, it will be noted, of the dynasty
of David; none from the Northern Kingdom-the seers Ahijah
(I Ki. 14.18; 15.29) and Elijah, such prophets as Isaiah (Isa. 20.3),
Jonah ben Amittai (II Ki. 14.25), and Second Isaiah (see Chapter IV
below), and, finally, that great worthy, Job (in the prologue and
epilogue of the Book); and note the use of the term "My servants the
prophets" «abaddi ha-nebNm) on several occasions (II Kings; Jeremiah;
Ezekiel; Zechariah).
Only one non-Israelite in the entire Bible is described as God's
<ebed, namely, "King Nebuchadrjnezzar of Babylon, My servant"
(N. me!ek-babil <abdi; Jer. 25.9; 27.6; 43.10). In all three, closely
related passages, the Babylonian monarch is depicted by Jeremiah
1) Cf., e.g., GEORGE ERNEST WRIGHT, "The Terminology of Old Testament
Religion and its Significance," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1 (1942), 404-411,
where the basic master-servant motif is discussed. ISAAC MENDELSOHN has written
the best survey of "Slavery in the Old Testament," in Interpreter's Dictionary of the
Bible, IV (1962), 383a-391a, following on his earlier, more general work on
Slavery in the Ancient Near East (New York, 1949); the data offered in Part II,
chapter 3 ("Slaves") of ROLAND DE V AUX'S Ancient Israel, its Life' and Institutions
(New York, 1961), are not analytically treated.
8 H. M. ORLINSKY

merely as God's rod of punishment against Judah and the other na-
tions of the East, a tool in the hands of God; and in the end, Ne-
buchadnezzar's scions and country will suffer drastic destruction at the
hand of God for having done what they did (25.12-14; and cf.
27. 21-22).1) [See "ADDITIONAL NOTE" on p. 11 below].
It is clear, then, that any loyal Israelite adherent of God could be
designated as His 'ebed. 2 ) And if, apart from the people Israel, it is
overwhelmingly Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David among the
individuals who are so designated-to judge from the statistics
readily comprehended by consulting the various forms of 'ebed in
SOLOMON MANDEL KERN'S Veteris Testamenti Concordantiae-it is ob-
viously because Abraham is the first Hebrew, Jacob is the immediate
ancestor of the twelve tribes, Moses is the lawgiver and founder of
the Israelite people, and David is the founder of Israel's Golden Era
and of the long Judean dynasty.
However, before coming to any further conclusions about 'ebed
in relation to God, something should be said about the precise ex-
pression mil' j~~-as distinct from "t~ "My servant" and the like.
Scholars tend to talk about the expression 'ebed Adonai as though it
were found frequently in Second Isaiah. It is all the more interesting,
therefore, and significant, that this expression occurs in Second
Isaiah only a single time, in 42.19, and it is there the people Israel,
not an individual person, that is referred to:

roT: ': '::IN''~:!l

""!!;iN •••• : '''T~l/'-CN
• T : - : !!;i,m .: - • '~l/'
• ':!l •• • ,~
•

:mil'
I
j~l/':!l
.,. .,':
'~l/"
... :
c~!!;i~:!l
T ... : .
'~l/'
•• •
,~•

1) Cyrus of Persia-if original in the text-is described in Second Isaiah

(44.28; 45.1) as "My shepherd ... His anointed" (i"'W7?''''~'') rather than as
"My/His servant" ("t~/;"Tt~). This may be due to his role vis-a-vis (a) Israel and
(b) the other nations: (a) unlike Nebuchadnezzar, who was picked to destroy
Israel, Cyrus was chosen by God to restore His people Israel (he is God's "shep-
herd" for His flock); and (b) unlike Nebuchadnezzar's dynasty, which was destined
soon to be destroyed, Cyrus' regime was going to be preserved for some time
(hence God's "anointed").
2) Considerable data are compiled in WALTHER ZIMMERLI-JOACHIM JEREMIAS,
The Servant of the Lord (= Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 20, 1957; this is the
English version of their article "IIIX1:~ Beou" in Theologisches Wiirterbuch zum Neuen
Testament, ed. GERHARD KITTEL-GERHARD FRIEDRICH, 1954,653-713). However,
there is but meager analysis in ZIMMERLI'S chapter (I, pp. 9-34) on "The mil' j~~
in the Old Testament," coupled with far too much of our own Twentieth Century
notions of "encounter with God" and "tension" (thus I Ki. 11.34 is said to exhibit
"a tense duality," p. 20); all the more is it a pleasure, therefore, to quote this fine
 CHAPTER ONE 9

This happens to be also the only instance in the entire Bible where
(ebed Adonai doesn't refer to an individual person. I)
Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, (ebed Adonai is found a total of 21
times, distributed and identified as follows:
(1) In 17 instances it refers to Moses: 34.5 (m;'~-"T~~ ;,~~); Josh. 1.1,
13,15; 8.31, 33; 11.12; 12.6 (bis); 13.8; 14.7; 18.7; 22.4, 5; II Ki.
18.12; II Chron. 1.3; 24.6. 2)
(2) In 2 instances it refers to Joshua son of Kun: Josh. 24.29 and
Jud. 2.8 (m;,~ "T~~ l~l-Hl ~~iil~).
(3) In 2 instances it refers to David, both times in superscriptions
in Psalms: 18.1 (the superscription is lacking in II II Sam. 22.1) and
36.1 ("Tn'? ;"il~-"T~~,? tr~~7?7).
(4) In addition, there are 4 instances of the expression e~i:f~~v "T~~
"servant of God," all of them referring to Moses: I Chron. 6.34 and
II Chron. 24.9 (e~0'~~V "T~~ il~~); Dan. 9.11 (l"Ilil"lil il~~l"If ,~~ ••.
. • .e~0·'~V-"T~~ il~~); Neh. 10.30 (il~J;l~ ,~~ e~0"~V l"I1il"lil l"I~77' .•
. . • e~0'~~V-"T~~ il~~ "T~il)·
From these data it is clear that the expression (ebed AdonailHa-
Elohim was employed in biblical times as something of a technical
term for Moses;3) that is to say, if a biblical Jew were asked: Who is

statement (p. 15), " ... The individual can become the servant of Yahweh only in
so far as he is a member of Israel; for the will of God is directed toward Israel. .. "
1) In his very fine analysis of "6 7tOC~~" (Note on "The Titles of Jesus in Acts,"
pp. 354-375 of Vol. V of Beginnings of Christianity; 6 7tOC~~ occupies pp. 364-370),
CADBURY had warned (p. 369) "against the too easy assumption of dependence
[of the term 7tOC~C; for Jesus] on Second Isaiah's (Ebed Yahweh," and in the course
of his note (2) on this statement he commented, "It is probably misleading to
refer to the figures in Isaiah as 'the servant.' There is always in Hebrew and Greek
a possessive, usually 'my.' It is also not quite true to the underlying text to speak
of 'the Servant of the Lord' or (Ebed Yahweh. Even if the early Christian passages
were regarded as dependent they attest 7tOC~~ KUPLOU only at Barnabas vi. 1. Only
late and probably in the sense of u!6~ do we get 7tOC~~ Be:ou . ." CADBURY'S strictures-
against HARNACK, TORREY, and others, receive considerable support from a
straightforward analysis of Old Testament terminology and usage.
2) I have not included such a passage as Jonah 1.9, where the Septuagint rea?s
aOUAO~ Kupwu "a servant of the Lord" (=mil~ "T~~) for preserved C~~ '/.?K")
('~ll;t)~!:t~ em "(And he [Jonah] said to them, 'I am) a Hebrew." The letter yodh
was sometimes employed as an abbreviation of the Tetragrammaton.
3) It need scarcely be added that our conclusions offer no more support for
SELLIN'S curious identification of Moses as the central personage in Isa. 53 than
they do, say, for Abraham, or Jacob, or David as that personage.
10 H. M. ORLINSKY

"the <ebed Adonai (or, Ha-Elohim)"? he would think of Moses im-

mediately. He would, of course, know of David as "an <ebed Adonai,"
and of Abraham, and Jacob, and Joshua, etc.; but Moses alone would
be "the <ebed Adonai/Ha-Elohim" par excellence-and this, because he
was Israel's lawgiver. Several passages come to mind at once, e.g.,
Dan. 9.11 (where Daniel addresses God): !TJ!!?in-n~ ~~~W ~~?lF~-~~')
n'1in~ (;,~~n:p 'W~ ;,w~:J~m ;'7l$v ~l'7W ':Jl.:lr;l) !TJ~P:P ~i~lF 'r;l7:;17 ~iO,
.. ·Q'0'~~V-i~W ;,W~; and Neh. 10.30: (n~77 ;'W~:JlF:;1~ ;'7l$:P Q'~~~' ..)
.. ·Q'0'~~V-i~W ;,W~ i~:P ;'tl;l; ~W~ Q'0"'~V n1in:p. Throughout the
Bible, "the torah of Moses" (;,W~ n1in) is virtually synonymous with
the expression "the torah of the Lord/God"; Mal. 3.22 put it plainly
enough, in the mouth of the Lord Himself: ':r~~ ;,W~ n':lin ~'~T
"Remember the torah of My servant Moses." And that is why the
Gemara (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 89a center) could assert:
,,:IT '~NllU ,'~lU ~S7 N'p'n ,'~:!tS7 ;,nuS7'~' ~'N';' ,;'lU~~ ;''':JP;' ,~ ~CN
'C'l' 'i:JS7 ;'lUC n~'n, "So the Holy One Blessed be He said to Moses,
'Since you have acted modestly, it [the Torah] shall be identified with
your name, as it is stated [Mal. 3.22]: Remember the Torah of My
servant Moses,' etc. "
In this connection it is worth noting that in post-biblical times,
Moses came to be called ~l'~1 ;,W~ "Moses our 1'eacher/Master" (in
his Legends of the Jews, Vol. V, p. 403, LOUIS GINZBERG has discussed
this expression along with the inverted order, ;,W~ ~l'~1, as well as
such terms as l1iiiji!iJ ~l'~1 for Judah Ha-Nasi, redactor of the Mishnah,
and :J1 'l'~1 for Abba Arika). I wonder whether the biblical term
<ebed Adonai for Moses gave way in time to Rabbenu because "Servant
of the Lord" had come in Christian circles to designate Jesus; but the
matter requires very careful study.
We are now in a postion to arrive at some conclusions about the
expression "servant of the Lord" in the Bible and in Second Isaiah.
With the apparent exception of Moses, no single person in the Bible
ever came to be recognized in biblical times as "the <ebed of the Lord".
Put differently, if a person who knows only the Hebrew Bible were
asked, "Who is the <ebed Adonai"? he would answer, "Moses is the
<ebed Adonai/Ha-Elohim, though God had many an <ebed, such as
David and Joshua and Abraham and Jacob." And if questioned
further, "How about the <ebed in Isaiah 40 if."? he would not under-
 CHAPTER ONE 11

stand the pertinence of the question, since Second Isaiah's (ebed had
no significance for him. As we shall see below, this significance first
came into being later in the period of the New Testament, about six
hundred years after Isaiah 53 was composed, and then read back into
the Hebrew Bible-a clear case of eisegesis.

ADDITIONAL NOTE
WERNER E. LEMKE, "Nebuchadrezzar, My Servant" (Catholic Bib/i-
cal Quarterly, 28 [1966], 45-50), has made a good case for regarding
cabdi in all three passages in Jeremiah as secondary. The analysis is
worth close study.
A much-overlooked study that makes some excellent points and
that merits careful analysis throughout is WILLIAM H. COBB'S
"The Servant of Jahveh," JBL, 14 (1895), 95-113.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE SO-CALLED "SERVANT OF THE LORD"

SECTIONS IN SECOND ISAIAH

Since the appearance in 1892 of BERNHARD DUHM's commentary,

Das Buch Jesaia (Gottingen, pp. XVIII, 284 ff., 365 ff.), following
on his earlier Die Theologie der Propheten (Bonn, 1875), 287 ff., scholars
have generally recognized four major sections in Second Isaiah as
constituting "Servant Songs": 42.1 ff.; 49.1 ff.; 50.4 ff.; 52.13-53.12.
It was DUHM'S contention that these four sections-along with some
other sections in the preserved text of Second Isaiah-were composed
by someone other than Second Isaiah, perhaps even constituting
originally an independent book, and that they were then incorporated
into the text of Second Isaiah proper whenever unused space in the
scroll permitted insertion.!)
A considerable number of competent scholars since DUHM have
argued in favor of comprehending the "Servant" sections within their

1) It was, again, DUHM (jesaia, pp. XVIII-XIX, 390 £I.) who proposed to
divide the last 27 chapters (40-66) of the book of Isaiah between two distinct
authors: 40-55 being allotted to Second (Deutero-) Isaiah, and 56-66 to Third
(Trito-) Isaiah. This division, with all kinds of variations, has been accepted by
most scholars; cf. the surveys and bibliographies, e.g., in OTTO EISSFELDT,
Einleitung in das A.T.2 (Tiibingen, 1956), 399 £I., 413 £I. (3rd ed., 1964: 444 £I.,
459 £I.); CHRISTOPHER R. NORTH, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah: An
Historical and Critical Study (Oxford, 1948), chap. IX (2nd ed., 1956); MENAHEM
HARAN, Between Ri'shonot (Former Prophecies) and J:IadashOt (New Prophecies):
A Literary-Historical Study in the Group of Prophecies Isaiah XL-XL VIII (in
Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1963-5723), chap. III, 73 £I.
I myself am not convinced that there was a Third Isaiah readily distinguishable
from Second Isaiah as the latter is from First Isaiah. Of course "the literary unity
of Is. 40-66 is undoubtedly imperfect, especially in later chapters: naturally the
whole will not have been delivered by the prophet continuously, but some al-
teration, and advance, in the historical situation may be presupposed for its later
parts. Thus ... " (SAMUEL R. DRIVER, An Introduction to the Literature of the O.T.,
rev. ed. (New York, 1913), 244 £I.; see in general, 211 f. (on Isa. 13.1-14.23),225 f.
(on chaps. 34-35), and 230 £I. (on chaps. 40-66). I regard the bulk of chaps. 40-66
as the product of a single author. However, in dealing with the several problems
of "The Servant of the Lord" I shall limit myself to chapters 40-55 when referring
to Second Isaiah.
 CHAPTER TWO 13

preserved position in the Hebrew text. That is to say, they may dis-
agree on the precise verses which each section constitutes; 1) or on the
date of compostion; or on the identification of the 'ebed in each of the
sections; 2) or on the actual number of such sections; 3) and the like.
They may even disagree on whether Second Isaiah himself or an
editor was responsible for the preserved setting of the "Servant"
sections. But in one major respect they are in substantial agreement:
while the four "Servant" sections belong essentially to Second Isaiah
himself, they may be treated as a distinct group apart from all the
other passages and sections in Second Isaiah in which the term "serv-
ant" is employed. NORMAN H. SNAITH, "The Servant of the Lord in
Deutero-Isaiah" (in Studies in Old Testament Prophery presented to
Professor Theodore H. Robinson, ed. H. H. ROWLEY [Edinburgh, 1950],
187-200) put it this way (p. 187): "Some few scholars have argued
against their segregation from the main body of the prophecy... The
great majority, however, have followed DUHM, to such an extent that
the existence of the four Servant Songs has come to be regarded as
one of the firm results of modern O.T. study... " 4)
Yet it seems to me that a basic, even fatal error in methodology is
committed at the very outset in separating the four so-called "Servant
of the Lord" sections from the other "Servant of the Lord" passages
and sections in Second Isaiah and treating them as a distinct unit,
simply because the term 'ebed (or the idea of an 'ebed) is present. There
is a priori no more reason for isolating either certain 'ebed or any 'ebed
passages in Second Isaiah than for lifting out of their preserved
Hebrew context passages that deal with the gentile nations, or with

1) Cf. the brief, convenient survey in HAROLD H. ROWLEY, The Servant of the
Lord and other Essays on the Old Testament (London, 1952), p. 6, n. 1.
2) Convenient surveys may be found in NORTH, Part 1. "Historical" (pp. 6-116),
and ROWLEY, Chapter I, "The Servant of the Lord in the light of Three Decades
of Criticism" (pp. 1-57). See further, Chapter IV below.
3) See, e.g., NORTH, "Are Any Other Passages to be Reckoned as 'Songs'?,"
pp. 127-138.
4) The literature on the subject in general is immense. A cross-section of the
scholarly treatment of our problem, together with bibliographical references, may
be found-in addition to the above-cited works by EISSFELDT, NORTH, ROWLEY,
and SNAITH-in such works as EDUARD KONIG, Das Buch Jesaja (Gutersloh,
1926; cf. his "Deuterojesajanisches," Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 9 [1898], 895-935,
937-997); CHARLES C. TORREY, The Second Isaiah (New York, 1928); EDWARD
J. KISSANE, The Book of Isaiah, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1943); JOHANNES LINDBLOM,
T.he Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah (= Lunds Universitets Arsskrift N.F. Avd. 1.
Bd. 47. Nr. 5; Lund, 1951).
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 2
14 H. M. ORLINSKY

foreign kings, or with Israel in exile and the like. Even if the <ebed in
some sections refers to an individual, whoever he may be, why should
these sections be treated in splendid isolation? And if the <ebed in
these same sections is identified-as it is by most scholars-with the
people Israel, then the entire analysis becomes absurdity itself, for
it is patently absurd to set apart "Israel as the Servant of the Lord" in
these four sections from "Israel as the Servant of the Lord" in the
other eight or so sections in Second Isaiah (41.8, 9; 42.19 ff.; 43.10;
44.1, 2; 44.21; 45.4; 48.20; 49.7. On 52.13 see chapter III below).
In this connection, NORTH'S chapter (IX, pp. 156-191) on the
"Authorship of the Songs" is most pertinent. After discussing (§ 1)
"Their Formal Relation to their Contexts" and concluding (p. 160)
that " ... we can no longer argue, either on the basis of a formal con-
nexion of the Songs with their contexts, or on the lack of such formal
connexion, that the Songs are, or are not, from Deutero-Isaiah,"
NORTH continues,"For want of any surer criterion we are forced to a
consideration of the vocabulary, style, metrical forms, and the ideas
of the Songs in relation to those of the main prophecy. If this should
seem like reducing the whole question to one of statistics, there
appears to be no alternative."
His detailed analysis (§ 2, pp. 160-169) of the "Language of the
Songs," leads NORTH to conclude that "It is impossible on the grounds
of vocabulary to deny (to 42.1-4) authorship by Deutero-Isaiah"
(p. 162); " ... Once more, the parallels with Deutero-Isaiah are so
close that it is impossible, on grounds of vocabulary alone, to deny
(to 49.1-6) identity of authorship ... " (163 f.); " ... there are sufficient
correspondences with DI to make it hazardous ... to deny (to 50.4-9)
his authorship. They extend over chaps. xlix-Iv as well as xl-xlviii"
(p. 165); and "It is not permissible, on grounds of vocabulary, to
assert that the passage (52.13-53.12) is by Deutero-Isaiah; but neither
is it permissible to deny it" (p. 169).
The identical picture emerges from the, less decisive, analysis of the
"Style and Metre of the Songs" (§ 3): "As to the metrical form of the
Songs, he would be a bold man who should deny [the Songs] to
Deutero-Isaiah on the score that they are different from his ... "
(p. 178). And, finally, his more detailed analysis of the "Theological
Standpoint of the Songs" (§ 4, 178-186) led NORTH to assert (p. 186),
" ... The conclusion, therefore, to which I feel compelled is that the
Songs are by Deutero-Isaiah... "
The over-all analysis and conclusions by NORTH, which took into
 CHAPTER TWO 15

consideration earlier studies by outstanding scholars, can be appre-

ciated fully only by one who has attempted the same thing with other
biblical Books: First Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Zechariah, Hosea, etc.
Of course one may, with justification, distinguish between major
divisions in authorship of Micah, Zechariah, etc.; and one may,
justifiably, isolate an individual chapter or section within each of these
major divisions as originating with a different author altogether.
Nervertheless, were one desirous, because of a special reason, of
isolating most any individual section in any of these Books, none of
context, vocabulary, style, meter, theology, etc., would probably
prevent him from doing so. Take, e.g., the recent attempt of KARL
ELLIGER (Deuterrjesaja in seinem Verhaltnis zu Tritqjesaja; 1933) to
demonstrate Third Isaiah as the author of 52.13-53.12. "ELLIGER'S
proof," NORTH noted (pp. 82 f.), "of the Trito-Isaianic authorship of
the last Song consists of a comparison, in the minutest statistical
detail, of the language and ideas of the passage with those of Deutero-
and Trito-Isaiah respectively ... But the unity of Isa. lvi-Ixvi-a
condition precedent to our being able to speak of an individual
prophet to be called Trito-Isaiah-is not the general view of scholars,
despite ELLIGER'S pleadings. The personality of 'Trito-Isaiah' is even
more elusive than that of his master. We never get to grips with him.
Our only means of knowing him-on ELLIGER'S own showing-is
as the editor of Deutero-Isaiah, and then through his own editor.
How, then, can ELLIGER know him so well as to say that his exilic
style, in chaps. xl-Iv, is more dependent upon that of Deutero-Isaiah
than his post-exilic style in chaps. lvi-Ixvi? .. On his principle we
might reasonably argue that all 'Deuteronomic' writings are from one
pen. Further, as between writers so similar in style as Deutero- and
'Trito-' Isaiah, it is antecendently improbable that we can ever be so
sure as ELLIGER is which chapter, or which half-verse, comes from
the one and which from the other."
And when NORTH gets to analyzing in detail (pp. 169-177) the
specific words and phrases that ELLIGER chose as the basis for his
view, one realizes in even fuller perspective how baseless ELLIGER'S
argumentation really is. I do not see how anyone can dispute seriously
NORTH'S conclusion (p. 177) that "All things considered, the verdict
must be that ELLIGER'S theory that the last Song is the work of'Trito-
Isaiah' is unproven ... He marshals his proofs with relentless tho-
roughness, and with a complete lack of any sense of humour; and
when we come to examine them closely they simply fall to pieces."
16 H. M. ORLINSKY

And so, once again, it becomes clear that there is nothing within
Second Isaiah, or the Old Testament in general, that would have led
anyone in the biblical period even to think in terms of "Servant
Sections" in Second Isaiah; and indeed, none ever did. It is only the
nature and needs of Christianity after the death of Jesus-as we shall
see below-that brought this sectional division into being.
 CHAPTER THREE

THE SO-CALLED "SUFFERING SERVANT"

AND "VICARIOUS SUFFERER" IN ISAIAH 52-53

Not only is the "Servant of the Lord" as a technical term (except

perhaps for Moses) foreign to the Hebrew Bible, and not only is there
no justification for isolating the "Servant" passages from their
preserved contexts, but it will now be seen, further, that the concepts
"Suffering Servant" and the servant as "Vicarious Sufferer" are
likewise post-biblical in origin-actually the product of Christianity
in the period subsequent to the death of Jesus.

A
Do ISAIAH 52.13-15 AND 53.1-12
REALLY CONSTITUTE A SINGLE UNIT
WITH BUT ONE SERVANT INVOLVED?

Scholarship has generally taken it for granted-since the term

<ebed occurs in 52.13, though not in chapter 53 until verse ii-that the
last three verses in chapter 52 and all of 53 constitute a single com-
position; 1) in this, scholars have followed old Christian tradition.
Yet there are several cogent reasons for questioning this, quite
gratuitous assumption.
1) MARTIN SCHIAN, Die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder in Jesaias 40-66, etc. (Halle, 1895),
pp. 34 f., 47, 59 f., isolated the two verses 52.13 and 53.1 as a later addition to
53.2-12, in his opinion the original song; after him LUDWIG LAUE (Die Ebed-
Jahwe-Lieder im II. Teil des Jesqja exegetisch-kritisch und biblisrh-theologisch untersucht
[Wittenberg, 1898]; see also pp. 343 ff. in his "Nochmals die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder
im Deuterojesaja" [Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 77 (1904), 319-379]) argued
that 52.13-15 was a later addition to chap. 53. In the twentieth century, WILLY
STAERK (Die Ebed Jahwe Lieder in Jesaja 40 jJ. Ein Beitrag zur Deuterqjesqja-Kritik
[Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament, XIV, 1913], 116 ff.), JOHANN
FISCHER (Isaias 40-55 und die Perikopen vom Gottesknecht. Eine kritisch-exegetische
Studie [Alllestamentliche Abhandlungen, VI, 4/5, 1916], 115 ff.), HEDWIG JANOW
(Das hebraische Leichenlied im Rahmen der Volkerdichtung [Beiheft zur Zeitschrift fur
die alllestamentliche Wissenschaft, 36, 1923], p. 256), JOHN MONTEITH ("A New
View of Isaiah liii," Expository Times, 36 [1924-25], 498-502), JAMES D. SMART
("A New Approach to the <Ebed-Yahweh Problem," Expository Times, 45 [1933-
34], 168-172), N. H. SNAITH (p. 199), and J. LINDBLOM (The Servant Songs in
Deutero-Isaiah [Lunds Universitets Arsskrift, N.F., Avd. 1, Ed. 47, No.5, 1951],
pp. 37 ff.), appear to stand alone in questioning this tacitly accepted view.
18 H. M. ORLINSKY

(1) The very first clause in 52.13, '''T:;1~

. '?'~i;'~
. miJ, "Behold, My
servant will prosper," 1) indicates through the pun '?'~ip~-'?!:t,ip7
that it is the people Israel that is the servant here, with God, of
course, the speaker. Like his fellow prophets, and the biblical writers
generally, our prophet was given to punning. Por the pun on "Israel"
here, compare 44.2b where Yeshurun represents Israel ("Pear not, My
servant Jacob, / Jeshurun whom I have chosen" 2» and 42.19b where
Meshullam is so intended ("Who is blind like Meshullam, / Blind like
the servant of the Lord?" 3) )4.) One is reminded at once of the same
use of the term Yeshurun three times in the Pentateuch (Deut. 32.15;
33.5,26) 5) and of the term Yesharim once (Num. 23.10) 6).

1) There can be little doubt of the meaning "prosper, succeed," or the like,
in the light of immediately following '~7? i-I;m Nlf~' C~"~.
2) Verses 1-2 read: :i~ 'T;1"IJ~ '?~?~:1 'J:t~ :lp~~ :17~~ ilJ;l~1 (1)
::1::n~~ n?~~ 9"~;'1 9~17 mil' "~~-il~ (2)
:i=! 'T;1!IJ~ l~"~'~ :lp~~ '''T~~ N"l:'l-'?~
3) Verses 18-19 read: :l'1itti7 ~~'~iJ C'i1~iJ1 ~:17~~ C'~iljiJ (18)
n'?WN
"'T: ':
':IN'?~~
• T : -:
W.,m
.••• :
''''T:l:l7-CN
.: - •
,~• "~:17
.. •
,~• (19)
:mil' ':l:l7~ "~:17' C'W~~ "~:17 ,~
I ': ' : : ••• : T,:' •• • •

The "deaf" and "blind" in Second Isaiah are the Judeans in exile, who are exhorted
to heed Second Isaiah's message.
4) TORREY, The Second Isaiah, p. 331, has some pertinent remarks on meshullam,
as onyeshurun (p. 344) andyaskil (p. 415), and on the prophet's "constant use of
paronomasia" (pp. 193 f.); or cf., e.g., SHELDON H. BLANK, Prophetic Faith in
Isaiah (New York, 1958), p. 79 and nn. 7, 9 (on p. 216). KARL BUDDE ("The So-
called 'Ebed-Jahwe Songs' and the Meaning of the Term 'Servant of Yahweh' in
Isaiah Chaps. 40-55," American Journal of Theology, 3 [1899], 533 f. [= 34 f. in
Die sogenannten Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder, etc. (Giessen, 1900))), followed, e.g., by KARL
MARTI (Das Buch Jesaja erkliirt [Ttibingen, 1900], ad loc.) and MONTEITH (499 f.),
missed the point completely in emending '?':lW' to '?N.,W" On meshullam see Ex-
cursus I in CURT LIND HAGEN, The Servant Motif in the Old Testament: A Preliminary
Stu4J to the 'Ebed-Yahweh Problem' in Deutero-Isaiah (Uppsala, 1950), pp. 216-219.
5) Respectively ~:v:t~1 1~"~; 1~~~1 "So Jeshurun grew fat and kicked (... He
forsook the God who made him / And spurned the Rock of his support)";
171.? 1~"~':;1 'iJ;1 "Then He became king in J eshurun"; and l~"~; '?!:tf l'!:t "0
Jeshurun, there is none like God, (Riding through the heavens to help you, /
Through the skies in His majesty)." The translation of the passages in the Pen-
tateuch is taken from the New Jewish (Publication Society) Version of the
Torah (Philadelphia, 1962).
6) The verse reads l;i~?~: :17~"-l'1~ "!f9~~ :lp~~ .,~~ il~~ '~
:~ilb~
IT'
'l'1,.,nN
.-:-
'ilm C'.,W' l'1i~ 'WEll l'1bl'l
': 'T: ':- T

"Who can count the dust of Jacob, / Number the dust-cloud of Israel? May I
die the death of the upright, / May my fate be like theirs!" Note that (singular!)
 CHAPTER THREE 19

(2) Independently, and at the same time bearing out the equation
''yaskil = Israel," the expressions "(powerful) nations" (
[O'~j] o:,il )

and "kings" (o'~?~) in v. 15, as also the description of the woebegone

servant in v. 14, point to the people Israel rather than to an individual
person as the servant: Israel will be exceedingly exalted and hono-
red,!) after shocking the mighty with its wretched condition,2) by the
same powerful nations and kings who would never have believed
possible what they will themselves see and hear. 3) It may be noted
here, in passing, that Second Isaiah employs such terms as "nations"
(0"1) and "kings" (o'~"~) in contrast not to the prophet himself but
to the people Israel, or to Cyrus, God's conquering hero in behalf of
Israel.
Second Isaiah has much to say about the degraded condition of
Israel in exile; indeed the raison d' etre of his career revolved precisely
about Israel's inferior standing and God's decision and ability to
restore Israel to her original home and status. Compare, e.g., the
prophet's opening words in chap. 40, where Israel's very presence in
Babylonia is described as "her term of service, of penal servitude"
(:1tt~~) and her punishment as far more severe than her sin warranted,

so that the entire situation justified fully the exulting clarion cry of
consolation and liberation (vv. 1,9):
(1) Comfort, oh comfort My people,
Says your God.

(9) Ascend a lofty mountain,

o Zion, herald of joy;
Raise your voice with power,

~ilb~ correctly refers back to the "Israel" inyesharim, which is parallel to Jacob
and Israel. On the rendering "the upright" foryesharim in the new JPS version of
the Torah there is an explanatory note that reads: "Heb Y esharim, a play on Yes-
hurun (Jeshurun; Deut. 32.15), a name for Israel."
1) :,~~ :1~~' N\fn O~"; '.:r~~ ",~~~ ilm
2) :OJ'tt '~f7;l ;"~r' ~il~"1~ W'~~ nl]~7,)-r;;) 0'~'1 9'?~ ~~7?W "~~~. Scholars
agree that parts of this verse, as of v. 15 following, are of uncertain meaning; nor
is the text altogether certain. Our own interpretation is based upon the generally
accepted understanding of the traditional Hebrew text.
3) 52.15 OD';> 0'~77? ~~~p:, "7~ 0'~'1 o:,;a ilr- 1:;;J
:mbnil ~~~W-N"
17 :. ; T .,WN'
".' - ; - ~N" Oil"
T .,. T "!;)O-N"
- , .,WN
': -: ':1>
.e.
20 H. M. ORLINSKY

o Jerusalem, herald of joy-

Raise it and have no fear,
Announce to the cities of Judah:
Behold your God! 1)

In 41.10-12 Israel is told:

(10) Fear not, for I am with you,
Be not frightened, for I am your God;
I strengthen you and I help you,
I uphold you with My victorious right hand.
(11) Shamed and chagrined shall be
All who contend with you;
They who strive with you
Shall become as nought and shall perish ...
(12) Less than nothing shall be
The men who battle against you. 2)

In 42.22 God's servant Israel is described as follows:

It is a people plundered and despoiled,
All of them trapped in holes
And imprisoned in dungeons.
They are given over to plunder, with none to rescue,
To despoilment, with none to say, "Restore!" 3)
And so on.
(3) The situation is quite different in chapter 53. Nothing is said
there of nations and kings. The treatment is entirely individualistic.
1) 40.1, 9 :tJ2'tl~~ "~N;' 'rp~ ~~m ~~m (1)
li·:;t l"I}~~1? 17'-'~~ tI~~-"tI ,~ (9)
'~?'l;l-~~ '~'"');; t;l~W~'7 l"I}~~1? 17i p tt:b~ '~'"');;
:tJ2'tl·~~ m::t il1~il; ':JW7 '"')1?~
2) 41.10-12 9'r.J~~ '~~-':;l17tl~l;l-~~ '~~-97?~ ':;l N1'l;l-~~ (10)
:'i?l:;t 1'~':;1 9'l;l~~J;l-~~ "l;l!1~-~~ 9'l;l~~~
1~ tJ'"')om ~:b ~~7f:' Wj~~ Ttl (11)
:9t.-'"') 'W~~ ~j~~" l:~~ ~'0:
9n~1? 'W~~ tJ~~1?l} ~~, tJW~~J;l (12)
:9P1?tt7~ 'W~~ o~~~~ T:~~ ~'0:
3) 42.22 tJ"'~
T'\
tJ,.,~n::l
• -
n!:lil '~OTV' l~l::l-tJ17 N~m
-··T T: T - :

~N~J;I;; tJ'~7'~ 'tl~~~

:~W;; "~~-l'~' il~~1? ~'~1? l'tt, l~ 7' ~';;
 CHAPTER THREE 21

Unlike the people Israel, which did not keep silent in the face of de-
struction and exile, which was not cut off from the land of the living,
and which deserved the divine punishment of destruction and exile
because of transgression of the covenant, the servant in 53 is one who
apparently did not complain, who ostensibly did not survive, and who
experienced suffering through no guilt of his own.
As a matter of fact, there is much in chapter 53 that is hyperbolic
rather than factual-descriptive (cf., e.g., NORTH, pp. 148 ff.); so that,
in effect, the personage involved did not really keep silent nor was he
already dead (see further below). But there is no way of getting around
the straightforward statement (v. 9), ,.p~ il,?"1~ N'?, il~~ c'?tI-N" '?~
"Although he had done nothing lawless / And there was no deceit in
his mouth," in contrast to which the servant had previously been
considered punished for his own sins rather than in consequence of
the sins of others (vv. 4-6; see beginning of next section). SMART (p.
169, § 3) put it bluntly, "Would any prophet of Israel worthy of the
name make the statement that Israel 'had done no violence, nor was
any deceit in his mouth'? TORREY (p. 421) tries to water this down to
mean only that Israel 'was far better than those for whom he suffered' ;
but the plain meaning remains. The writer of Is 40-66 was under no
such delusions about his people. He reminds them of sins of the past,
and assails them for sins of the present... " And cf. ROWLEY, p. 51.
It is worth noting that even TORREY, who regards 52.13-53.12 as a
single major unit, with Israel being the servant throughout-vicarious-
ly atoning for the Gentiles (409 f.)-has to distinguish 52.13-15 ("the
formal statement," with God as the speaker) from 53.1-9 ("the main
body... conceived in somewhat dramatic form," with the Gentiles as
the speaker) and 10-12 (God again as the speaker). LINDBLOM, who
maintains (p. 37) "that it is rather astonishing that most commentators
have so lightly passed over the problem of the unity of the passage
LII.13-LIII.12", regards 52.13-53.1 as a unit (in which God addresses
Israel in exile), with 53.2-12 constituting "a prophetic revelation in the
form of a vision ... The suffering man is ... a fictitious person, who ...
is conjured up in the prophet's imagination, and ... is the subject of a
divine revelation" (p. 46).
(4) A closer examination of the last three verses in chapter 52 in
relation to what precedes will reveal that they constitute a suitable
ending for all of chapter 52. The entire chapter-actually the theme
begins already in chapter 51 preceding- is a proclamation and ex-
hortation to Zion-Jerusalem to prepare for the triumphant return of
22 H. M. ORLINSKY

the exiles, a triumph even greater than the Exodus from Egypt:
But you shall not depart in haste,
You shall not leave in flight;
For the Lord is marching before you,
The God of Israel is your rear guard. 1)
It is with this dramatic proclamation that our section is to be associ-
ated: God's degraded servant, His people Israel, will astonish every-
one by the great restoration that he will achieve.
(5) As for the few verbal similarities between 52.13-15 and 53.1-12
(even allowing for the relatively few verses involved), e.g., "~i:I and
;,~,~ (each in vv. 14 and 2), and I:l"~' (in vv. 14-15 and 11-12), and
the use of "the root :s7~~ as the link-word" 2) (viz., the verb ~:s7,?~ in
15 and the noun ~m:wl,?~ in 1)-they help to indicate why 53.1 ff. was
placed after 52.13-15, and may even help to prove that the author of
the one section was responsible also for the second; they do not,
however, prove that the two sections constitute a single unit. 3 )

(6) It has been noted that-as against the (rather late) chapter
division-Jewish tradition begins a section with 52.13 (to the end of
53).4) However, neither the one division nor the other-when the two
traditions fail to agree-is a),ltomatically to be followed; each instance
has to be decided on its own merits. Interestingly, the complete Isaiah
1) 52.12 n::l~tt ~" ;'1?~l1?~~ ~K~l] lifF,flJ:t K"" ":P
:~!$?iy': "tT~~ I:l~!?li>~,?~ m;," 1:l~~!?7 "lJ~i1-":P
2) SNAITH, p. 199 bottom. It may be noted that the form ;,:w~~~ is found only
here in all of chapters 40-66 of Isaiah.
3) This is one of the main aspects of LEON J. LIEBREICH'S detailed study of
"The Compilation of the Book of Isaiah," Jewish Quarterly Review, 46 (1955-56),
259-277; 47 (1956-57), 114-138 (especially 135 f., where KW; "be elevated" in
52.13, but K~~ "bore" in 53.4, 12 are cited). And cf. the careful analysis of the
"Language of the Songs" by NORTH, pp. 161-177, 189-191.
4) Cf., e.g., CHRISTIAN D. GINSBURG, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical
Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London, 1897; reissued in 1966 by KTAV
Publishing House, New York, with an introductory essay on "The Masoretic
Text: A Critical Evaluation" by the present writer), Part I, Chap. II, "The Section-
al Divisions of the Text (the Open and Closed Sections)," pp. 9-24. Thus EISS-
FELDT, 150 f. (3rd ed., 171 f.), e.g., after discussing some instances in which
"Hier ist also die Kapitelteilung besser," continues with "Umgekehrt verdient
die Paraschenteilung Gefolgschaft, die KapitelteiJung dagegen nicht, etwas bei
dem letzten der 'Ebed-Jahwelieder Jes 52 13-53 12 und bei dem von uns schon
als eine Einheit, namlich also Volksklaglied erkannten Stiick Jes 63 7-64 11. .. "
 CHAPTER THREE 23

Scroll treats both 52.13 and 53.1 as the beginning of sections; 1)

Isaiah Scroll II, however, which coincides far more frequently than
Scroll I with the masoretic division (as with the preserved Hebrew
text),2) has a space-division at 52.13 only (none at 53.1).
Looking back, one may well wonder whether 52.13-15 would ever
have been attached to chapter 53 following, instead of with verses 1-12
preceding, had it not been for the fact that verse 13 began with "My
servant" ('1:t~ ~,~~~ ltT). All in all, then, there is insufficient reason
for treating 52.13-15 and 53.1-12 as a single unit; and our analysis of
the concepts "Suffering Servant" and "Vicarious Sufferer" will be
based on chapter 53 alone.

B
Is THE SUBJECT OF ISAIAH 53
AN INDIVIDUAL PERSON OR THE PEOPLE ISRAEL?

A fundamental, and moot, problem in chapter 53 that requires

solution is whether the personage involved is an individual or the
people Israel. Let it be stated here, at the outset, that it cannot be the
people Israel that is involved.
It is a fact that the central figure in this chapter experienced suffering
and punishment for no transgression or guilt of his own; the latter
half of v. 9 asserts this clearly enough:
Although he had done nothing lawless
And there was no deceit in his mouth. 3)

This alone at once excludes the people Israel from further con-
sideration.
The devastation of Judah, the destruction of the Temple, and the

1) HANS BARDTKE has discussed "Die Parascheneinteilung des Jesajarolle I

von Qumran" (in Festschrift Franz Dornseiff, ed. H. KUSCH [Leipzig, 1953],
pp. 33-75). He has noted (pp. 67 f.) that "Ftinf offene Paraschen lassen sich von
52,7 bis 53,12 feststellen. Diese sind: 52,7-12,52,13-15,53,1-8, 9-10a, 10b-12; die
erste Parasche wird im MT durch BHK(2) bestatigt und Pesch, die zweite ist
vorhanden in Petrop., S, B, A. Von 53,1 an hat MT keine Untergliederung mehr,
auch nicht Pesch und B ... "
2) The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew Universiry, ed. ELEAZAR L. SUKENIK (-NAH-
MAN AVIGAD; Jerusalem, 1955), Plate X; cf. SAMUEL LOEWINGER, "The Variants
of DSI II," Vetus Testamentum, 4 (1954), 155-163.
3) 53.9b :"P.f i17t'1~ ~" i1~W 07tIJ-~'" .,~
24 H. M. ORLINSKY

exile of so many of her finest citizens to Babylonia was the greatest

national tragedy yet experienced by Israel. To account for this un-
precedented catastrophe to God's chosen, covenanted people, Second
Isaiah asserted-and this is the very core of his message-that God
was the only Deity in the universe, omnipotent and just. As a just God,
He punished Israel for transgressing the covenant, and in His om-
nipotence He used the army of Babylonia as the means of bringing
this justified punishment upon His people. Now, however, the penalty
having been paid by Israel in the fullest measure, God will restore
His people to their homeland, to "Jerusalem, holy city" (52.1).1)
Those who hold-and they constitute a vast, perhaps the majority
of biblical scholars-that Israel is the subject of Isa. 53 and that
innocently and meekly it went into exile to make, or rather to con-
stitute, expiation for the gentile nations, must explain away or pass
over in silence the numerous passages in Second Isaiah that assert
clearly, or assume, that it is Israel's own sins that led to her captivity.
I have in mind such passages as 40.2, where Jerusalem is told
That she has completed her term,
That her iniquity is expiated,
For she has received at the hand of the Lord
Double for all her sins. 2)

1) On the concept W"i'il "'37 O"W,.,,, see now HARAN, pp. 96-101.
2) 40.2 i;I'7~ ~~ii<' r;l'7~"7 :l7-'~ ~"fj
mi37 il~"l ':.I ::r~:l~ il~'~ ':.I
loT -: T:' • T T: T: T •

:i;I'p~WIJ-':;?f o~~~~ il'il' '=1;) ilOP7 '~

It is curious that the expression "double, twofold" (O~~~~) has sometimes been
understood literally. Thus STANLEY A. COOK, "The Prophets of Israel" (Cam-
bridge Ancient History, vol. III, 1925), p. 492, surmised that "if Israel had received
double for her sins (Isa. 40.2), might not the surplus have a saving efficacy for
others?" In this he was followed, e.g., by EISSFELDT, "The Ebed-Jahwe in
Isaiah xL-Iv. in the Light of the Israelite Conceptions of the Community and the
Individual, the Ideal and the Real" (Expository Times, 44 [1932-33], 261-268),
pp. 265 ff., who would have it that Jerusalem, having "received from the hand of
Jahwe double punishment for all her sins ... the possibility is at least suggested
that the surplus punishment may be credited to others ... " In immediate reply,
SMART has put it this way (p. 168), "EISSFELDT uses the old explanation that the
double punishment mentioned in 40(2) was half for the sins of the world. But surely
the evident meaning of 40(2) is that since the nation has been punished twice over
for all her sins the new day of forgiveness and blessing must be at hand. The
purpose is to emphasize that the time of punishment has been completely fulfilled."
PIETER A. H. DE BOER, Second-Isaiah's Message (= Oudtestamentische Studien, Vol. XI,
Leiden, 1956), p. 115, would have it that " ... Second-Isaiah's message is that
their (viz., part of the people's) suffering, beyond their deserved punishment,
 CHAPTER THREE 25

Or 42.22-25:
(22) It is a people plundered and despoiled,
All of them trapped in holes
And imprisoned in dungeons.
They are given over to plunder, with none to rescue,
To despoilment, with none to say, "Restore!"
(23) Is there anyone among you to give ear to this,
To attend and give heed from now on:
(24) Who was it gave over Jacob to despoilment,
Israel to plunderers,
If not the Lord Himself, against whom we sinned!
They would not follow His ways
And would not heed His Teaching;
(25) So He poured out wrath upon them,
His anger and fierce war,
And it blazed upon them all about, but they heeded not,
It burned among them, but they gave it no thought.1)

Or 43.24-25 :
(21) You did not buy Me fragrant reed with money
Nor sate Me with the fat of your sacrifices.

was accepted by YHWH as an atonement for those (Jews) who remained without
punishment ... " We shall see below that the non-Israelite nations did not "sin"-
they had no covenant with God to transgress!-nor were they atoned for. Our
term "double" is employed rhetorically, not mathematically; cf., e.g., TORREY,
p.305.
1) 42.22-25 c,:!) c"~n::!
TO. . . -
n~iI
-··T
'~Otzj,
T:
f~T::!-CY
T -
~~;": (22)

~~~J;liJ C'~7~ 'tl~~~

:::l~iJ '~N-l'~' iI~WI? ~,~~ 1'~' T~7 ~'iJ
:,irytt7 Y~~~' ::lWR~ l"lN! l'T~~ C;>~ '~ (23)
C'n~7 ~~~~~1 ::lp~~ [K :10Wn~~;Q = J il9W??7 ltl~-'~ (24)
i~ ~l~r;o ~T :1JiI' ~i~t)
:ir,il"l~ ~YI?~ N~' 1i~O "~·n; ~::ltt-N~?
iI~07~ m~n i!:)~ illt!:! "7~ 'l!;)~~' (25)
:::l~-~~ C'~;-N~' i::!-'~~l;l) Y1; N~? ::l';~~ ~iI\PtI~J;l'
On i!:)~ illt!:!in v. 25, as against the common emendation i!:)~ l"l~n (cf. IQISa
N'~~ l"l~n), see H. M. ORLINSKY, "Studies in the St. Mark's Isaiah Scroll, III:
Masoretic :111!:! in Isaiah XLII, 25" (Journal oj Jewish Studies, 2 [1951], 151-154).
26 H. M. ORLINSKY

Nay, you burdened Me with your sins,

Wearied Me with your iniquities.
(25) It is I, I, who-for My sake-
Wipe your transgressions away
And remember your sins no more.!)

Or 44.21-22:
(21) Remember these things, 0 Jacob,
o Israel, for you are My servant ...
(22) I wipe away your sins like a cloud,
And your transgressions like mist;
Come back to Me, for I redeem you. 2)

Or 48.1-8:
(1) Hear this, 0 house of Jacob,
You who are called by Israel's name ...
Who swear by the name of the Lord
And invoke the God of Israel-
But not in truth or justice ...
(4) I know that you are stubborn:
Your neck is an iron sinew
And your forehead copper ...
(5) I knew that you would deal treacherously,
"A rebel from birth" you were called. 3 )
1) 43.24-25 'm'1"");:1 ~~ ~'P~T ::17m :-r~R I"J\?~~ ''1' l?~R-~~ (24)
:~'lJli~~ 'm~~i:-r ~'~'~WIJ~ 'ml~~!;11~
:'?T~ ~~ ~'~~wm ~~~~7 ~'~~~ :-rpb N~:-r ':;ll~ ':;ll~ (25)
2) 44.21-22 :-r!;l~-'1~~ '~ ~~,ip:, ::1p~~ :-r7~-'~T (21)
:'~!p'~l) ~~ ~~,ip: :-r!;l~ '~-i~~ ~'T;\!~;
~'D'~WIJ nw~' ~'~~~ ::Iw~ 'l)'I)1? (22)
:~'fi7~? '~ ,'?~ :-r~~w
3) 48.1-8 ::Ip~~-l"\'~ l"\~T-~:I1,?~ (1)
~N~; :-r1~:-r: '1#~~ ~~,ip: CW~ c'~lRm
~"~T' ~N'iD' ':-r'~N::I~
.:- •• T:···"
mi1' cw~ C':I1~w~:-r
" : • T : . -

~N'R; w7,i'tI "~~-'~ (2) ::-ri?1;t~ ~~, l"\~~9 ~~

:ip~ l"\iN~;t :-rm' ~::l~9~ ~~,ip: ':::l~~-~~'
CN.'~~~' ~N;t; ';>~~ 'T;\lm T~~ l"\iliWN}V (3)
i1!;1~ :-r~R '~ 'T;\~"J~ (4) ::-r~~~!;11 'l)'¢'W CNJ;1;>
::-r'R~n~ ~t!;t~~ ~~!W ~n~ i'~'
 CHAPTER THREE 27

In 48.18 God tells Israel:

If only you had obeyed My commandments,
Your welfare would have been like a stream
And your triumph like the waves of the sea.. .1)
Or, finally, 50.1, where the Lord says:
It is for your sins that you were sold,
For your crimes that your mother was dismissed. 2)
It is unheard of in the Bible that Israel, God's "treasured people"
( rT~~1?
ClI), His partner in the covenant, should suffer innocently for
the sins and in behalf of any non-Israelite people. 3 But leaving aside
for the moment the problem of Israel as a vicarius, as a substitute for
gentile nations, let us deal with the matter of alleged sin on the part
of these nations: precisely what sins are the gentile nations supposed
to have committed to warrant punishment from God, punishment
that Israel will allegedly suffer in their stead?
Biblically, gentile nations committed two kinds of crimes which
justified God's intervention: (a) transgression against the so-called
Noahide laws, what might be called crimes against natural law or
humanity; (b) crimes against God Himself or against Israel, God's
covenanted partner whom He promised to protect and prosper. Thus

9'f)~~~iJ Ni~l;\ c}\?~ ttt~ 97 i'~~' (5)

:C~:;t ':Pl?n ''?I?I;l~ C~~ '~~~ "!~~l'l-nil
~i'~l'1
Nil;!rT Cl'lN' i'I':::l rTfn l'l:;'~W
n' - -: ... - : T'" •• -: T : - T
(6)
:Cp~j; ~1;!1l'1i'~~~ rTl;\lI~ l'1iW1!1 9'.t:'l~~~iJ
cn~~~ ~I;!, Ci'-'~!?'?, ttt~ ~I;!, ~~!~~ rT~~ (7)
:t'f1~j; miJ '~~l'l-n?
9JTtt rTOT;\I;l-~' ttt~ C~ ~~j~ ~, C~ ~~~~-~I;! C~ (8)
:1? N1P l\?f~ ~V?~~ ii~~.t:'l iil~ '.t:'l~'J: ':P
1) 48.18 'ni~~7 ~~WRiJ N~'
:C~iJ '1y~:p 9J;1R1:;t1 9~il;!~ 'ij~;;> 'iJ;)
2) 50.1 rT,rT' ,~tt rT~
rT'l'ln;,w "!WN C:l~N l'1~l'1":::l ,~o rTf ,~
T • : _. '.' - : ... :. • : ':.. ': ••

i' C:ll'1N 'm:l~-"WN 'wi~~ ,~ iN

n ':: '," .: - T ': -: - • •

:C?,'P~ rTO~~ C~'V.~I;l~~ C!;li;???~ C~'t1li~~ 10

3) SMART (pp. 168 f.), while seeing with everyone else vicariousness in chap. 53,
nevertheless recognizes the fact that "The idea of Israel as a suffering Servant,
meekly redeeming the nations, is quite foreign to the thought of the prophet, and
has been largely instrumental in obscuring his real thought ... "
28 H. M. ORLINSKY

Amos (1.3-2.3) arraigned Israel's neighboring nations, the inhabitants

of Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab for crimes
against humanity; Judah and Israel, however, alone in the world,
are arraigned for transgression of the covenant (2.4 1'\1iT-l-1'\~ !::ltn~1r~~
mi1~ "because they rejected the instruction of the Lord"). Isaiah
-First Isaiah, in 37.23 ff.-condemned Sennacherib king of Assyria
for having blasphemed the Lord by proclaiming his own power,
rather than God's, the source and cause of his victories (and cf.
10.6 ff.). Jeremiah (chap. 27) promised destruction for those nations
who, contrary to God's decision, will not submit to "Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylonia, My servant." Or cf., e.g., Isa. 14.12-16; Jer. 50-51
passim.
In Second Isaiah, however, the situation is quite different. If the
nations will be smitten by God, if the gentile peoples are repeatedly
denounced by the prophet, if Babylonia herself will be utterly des-
troyed-and all this is exactly what the prophet asserts-that was not
because they had sinned but simply because they were the means by
which God would show Israel and the whole world His uniqueness
and omnipotence, and His abiding love for His people Israel. Passage
after passage makes it crystal clear that the gentile nations were to be
subjected to ignominy and defeat not because of any sins charged to
them but only because God was to show His might in behalf of Israel.
One recalls at once the identical fate of Egypt and its Pharaoh in the
days of Moses and the Exodus, when God hardened and stiffened
Pharaoh's heart so that He could perform His miracles in the land and
"so that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord" (Ex. 7.3-5).
Thus, in 40.9-11 our prophet proclaims joyfully that God will
raise His mighty arm against the gentiles-hardly to spread His
covenant and commandments among them-in order to gather in
His lambs, exiled Israel:

... (10) Behold the Lord God comes in might,

His arm winning triumph for Him...
(11) Like a shepherd He pastures His flock:
He gathers the lambs in His arms
And carries them in His bosom;
Gently He drives the mother sheep.!)

1) 40.9-11 li'~ 1'\}~~7? 17-~~~ ;:t~~-'tI ~~ (9)

~~'~!'1-~!:t ~~~j;;t ~:?Vi~'~ 1'\l.W~7? 17i i' 1j:;'~ ~~~!O
 CHAPTER THREE 29

In verses 15-31 the nations are belittled and mocked, their idols
ridiculed, and the leaders threatened with extinction, simply because
they are not covenanted partners of God, whereas the Judean exiles
who have faith in the Lord will be restored:
(15) The nations-they are a drop in a bucket,
Reckoned as dust on a balance;
The countries-He lifts them like motes ...
(17) All nations are as nought before Him,
Accounted by Him as less than nothing ...
(23) He brings potentates to nought,
Makes rulers of the earth as nothing ...
(27) Why do you say, 0 Jacob,
Why declare, 0 Israel:
"My way is hid from the Lord,
My cause is ignored by my God"? ..
(31) They who trust in the Lord shall renew their strength
As eagles grow new plumes:
They shall run and never weary,
They shall march and not grow faint.1)
----
:C?'ti1;l~ iW' i'l1~i'I; 'jW7 'il?~
i~ i'l7!f~ i17"p ~i~~ P!lJf mi'l' '~i~ miJ (10)
:"l~1;l in'17~~ iT-l~ i"~irJ
I'T : T ... : • T:
iUi'I
•••

c'~7f? p~; i17"Y~ i'I~i~ i"l~ i'I~"f (11)

:1;lm7 ni1;lw ~11r. ip'tr~~
1) 40.15-31 ~~vtt;l~ tl~~yN~ i'lJW:;>~ ,~,~ "~f c~illtr (15)
"N.~ " 1'~ lil~7~ (16) :1;li~~ i''J~ c'~~ 1tr
:i'I~i17 " 1'~ in~m
:i~-~~!ft;l~ ~i'lh~ O~~7,?
i1H l~~f tl~WJ-1;lil (17)
:i~-~~i~!:l n~~,-m~~ 1;l~ l~'7?jJ;l '~-1;l!;t, (IS)
~~~n; ~o~~ "1j~' W?1J 1~~ 1;l9~iJ (19)
"n~~ ~~i~-N1;l r~ i'I~~"J;l Til91?iJ (20) :"1,i~ "19~ nii'\li~
:~i~~ N1;l1;l~!;!1 r~ry~ i1;l-wp~; C~I) W'l'J
c~1;l
I.':T
WN"~•• 'Ui'I
-,
~i1;li'l
-:
~17~tt1n
T:'
~i1;li'l
-:
~17jn
zoo ~i1;li'l
-: (21)

:Y!t$o nijl?i~ CDl'~n ~i1;ln

C'?m~ O'~!f" Y!~O l~n-1;l~ ~W"iJ (22)
:n~W7 1;l;;rN~ Ctrtl,?~1 C~~~ i'~;l i'I\?i~iJ
:i'lWW mT-l~ Y!~ '\?P;lizj r~7 c';yi., ltliaiJ (23)
c~m Y!~~ tt1'1izj-1;l~ "1~ ~17,t-1;l~ "1~ ~17~;-1;l~ "1~ (24)
:C~'l;\ tt1~~ i'I?Wl?~ ~tt1~:1 c;;r~ "1W~-C~'
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 3
30 H. M. ORLINSKY

Everyone knows that the traditional Hebrew text of chapter 41 is

not altogether clear and that several individual words are hardly
original; yet the context as a whole is clear: the gentile "nations" and
"kings" will be subdued (vv. 2-3), the "coastlands" and the "ends of
the earth" will tremble in fear (v. 5), and all of Israel's enemies will
be destroyed-in short, in the entire world the Lord is on the side
only of His covenanted people Israel. Here is how the prophet
himself put it (vv. 8-16):

(8) But you, 0 Israel, My servant,

Jacob, whom I have chosen,
Seed of Abraham My friend-
(9) You whom I led from the ends of the earth
And called from its far corners,
To whom I said: You are My servant;
I chose you, I have not rejected you-
(10) Fear not, for I am with you,
Be not frightened, for I am your God;
I strengthen you and I help you,
I uphold you with My victorious hand.
(11) Shamed and chagrined shall be
All who contend with you;
They who strive with you
Shall become as nought and shall perish.
(12) You may seek, but shall not find
Those in conflict with you;

:W;iR "~N;' il~t.p~' '~~'Ip'JJ;1 ,~-~~, (25)

i17~ N'~-'~ ~Ni~ C~'~'~ Ci"r~Nip (26)
N~R: C~f C7~7 C!$~;t "~9~~ N'~i~tl
:.,,~~ ~~ W'~ lJi'l r'7p~' C'~iN ~.,~
~~,ip: "~'JJ;1~ ~p~~ '~Nn i11f7 (27)
:,b:s7' ,~tlW~ 'i1'~N~~ ;"i1'~ '~"i
• -:- • T :. - '::" ••• : -
i1'l'ltll
T::'

~~~~ ~~-C~ ~~'J; Ni~n (28)

nt'V ni~R Nji~ ;"i1' C7i:s7 'tf~~
:i~l~~f)~ 'R.l"!. 1'~ :s7A': ~~11']~': ~~
:i1#i~ i1~;tW C'~iN r~7~ tl? I']~~~ 1l':l1 (29)
:~~l!!f: ~iWf c'''')~n;~ ~~t' C'''')W~ ~~~:, (30)
C'J~~~ .,~~ ~~~~ tl~ ~~'7t)~ ;"i1' 'jp, (31)
:~~N': ~~, ~:l7~ ~:s7~': ~~, ~~~";
 CHAPTER THREE 31

Less than nothing shall be

The men who battle against you.
(13) For I the Lord am your God,
I hold you by the hand,
I say to you: Have no fear;
I will be your help.
(14) Fear not, 0 worm Jacob,
o men of Israel:
I will help you-declares the Lord-
I your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
(15) I will make of you a threshing-sledge,
Sharp, new, with many spikes.
You shall thresh the mountains to dust,
And make the hills like chaff.
(16) You shall winnow them
And the wind shall carry them off,
The whirlwind shall scatter them.
But you shall rejoice in the Lord,
And glory in the Holy One ofIsrael.I)
Yet throughout this inspired statement, not a word about the nature
of the sin committed by the gentile nations whom God will cause to
1) 41.8-16. ,"rt)IJf .,W~ ~p~~ "1~~ ,~,~: :-rJ;l~? (8)
:"~0k Cv'~~ 17J!
'"n~'p v"7"~~~~ n~V ni~p~ ,"T;1PIt1t.r .,W~ (9)
:'"i:l9~,? N'? ,"l;1itlf :-rJ;l~-"1~~ '7 "~k,
'"rf'~ "~~-":;l17J;ltpl;1-'~ "~~-'7p~ ":;l ~'"l;1-'~ (10)
:"R.l~ 1"~":;1 '"l;1~~T;l-'1~ '"l;1!!~-'1~ '"l;1~~l:\
1~ C"':l\.9ij ,:;;, ~1:J7f:? ~lV~~ m(11)
:'~"i "W~~ ~i~N"? l:~~ ~":;T:
'n~~ "W~~ C~;t,?l) ~"? CWR;1T;l (12)
:'P,?tl7~ "W~~ O~!9~ l:~~ ~":;T:
'iP"~; p"m~ '"t.r'~ m:-r" "~~ ":;l (13)
:'"i:li!~ "~~ N'"l;1-'~ 97 "~kv
,~,~: "tl'? ~p~~ n~7i1'l "l:\i"l;1-'~ (14)
:'!5'~: 1~~l? m:-r"-c!::i~ '"l;1i!~ "~~
ni:!;l"~ ,~~ lV'Jt'I Y~"t'll'JiI:J7 ,"l;1,?W :-rm (15)
:C"WJ;l Y~~ n;17~t~ pip? C"iv lV~'J;l
cni~ Y"!;lJ;l :-r'W9~ c~~l;1 tI~"? Cjil;1 (16)
:'~ijJ;1l;1 ,~,~: lViip:;1 m:-r"~ '''~J;l :-rJ;l~?
32 H. M. ORLINSKY

perish and become as nought. And the same is true, e.g., in 42.23-24,
where God Himself is stated to have handed over "Jacob for spoil,
Israel to plunderers"; clearly all that the gentile nations did was to
serve as tools of God's punishment of sinful Israel.
It should be observed here that the expressions "nations," "peo-
ples," "ends of the earth," "seacoasts" (or "isles"), "far corners"
(respectively o~il; O"'Ptt7; Y')1$i) l'1;~R; O"~~; o,,~,,~~), and the like, do
not, as a matter of fact, refer to any particular nations at all. Our
prophet has but one specific nation in mind as Israel's foe, and that is
Babylonia. Whom else would he have in mind at this point in history:
Egypt? Or Phoenicia? Or Edom? Or Philistia? Or Assyria? When he
used the terms "nations; peoples; ends of the earth," etc., his au-
dience recognized in them at once poetic language for "the whole
world; the universe; everyone," exactly as First Isaiah, among
others, meant to be understood when he began with
Hear, 0 heavens,
Give ear, 0 earth.
By the same token, when the prophet refers to "kings," "rulers,"
"chieftains," "potenates," "rulers of the earth" (respectively O"~~~;
o"~~; o"~T;'; Y')~ "~~w ;o":;>77?), and the like, he has no particular
chieftain or potentate or king in mind; his Israelite audience under-
stood these expressions to refer to the non-Israelite world of rulers
and governments and nations. Even in 41.11-12, e.g., when the
prophet inveighs against

All who contend with you,

They who strive with you .. .
Those in conflict with you .. .
The men in battle aginst you 1)
lt is not necessary to look for anyone in particular-not even the
Babylonian conquerors, three and four decades after the Judean
exiles had been living comfortably among them; indeed, the anta-

1) For the Hebrew text, see p.31, n.1 preceding. And whether it is Cyrus or Abra-
ham or anyone else who is the central figure in this chapter, note that the chapter
begins with: "Stand silent before Me, 0 coastlands, / And let nations renew their
strength" (IJ~ ~!:l"~!:1~ O"'P~7~ O"~~ ...'?~ ~v}"j!:1tt), where the O"'P~7" • O"~~ in v. 1,
as the 1''':)I$i) l'1;~R" ·O"~~ in v. 5, are, again, simply the non-Israelite world, from
whose midst God will liberate His servant Israel.
 CHAPTER THREE 33

gonists in these two verses are described previously as from "the ends
of the earth and from its far corners" (v. 9; and cf. vv. 1 and 5).
Again, when the prophet proclaims (42.10-12):
(10) Sing to the Lord a new song,
His praise from the ends of the earth-
You sailors of the sea and its creatures,
You coastlands and their inhabitants!
(11) Let the desert and its towns cry aloud,
The villages where Kedar dwells;
Let Sela's inhabitants shout,
Call out from the peaks of the mountains.
(12) Let them do honor to the Lord,
And tell His glory throughout the landsJ)
he is not referring to the denizens of the sea, or to the inhabitants of
Kedar, or of Sela, or of the desert, and the like; he is resorting to
rhetoric pure and simple. 2)
Even nations not involved in Israel's exile, Egypt, Cush, and the
Sabeans, our prophet asserts, will come under Israel's authority, for
it is only Israel who has God on her side; cf. 43.3-6 and 45.14-17:
(3) For I, the Lord, am your God,
The Holy One of Israel delivers you:
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in return for you.
(4) Because you are precious in My sight
You are honored, and I love you;
I will give mankind in your stead
And peoples in exchange for your life.
(5) Fear not, for I am with you:
I will bring your seed from the east
And I will gather you from the west;
1) 42.10-12 l"?!$v iI~R~ in1;:JT;! tD71J "~ mil'~ w~ (lO)
:CiI':ltD" C'"K iK'~~~ C"iI 'i,i'
.",' .. :; . . ! T - •• :

'::!j? :lWtl C'i~n ,'?V, 'fl~ ~K~~ (11)

:~m:!t'
n: • tl"iI
• tDKi~ 17"O
T
':ltD' ~~i'•• - '/ •• : T

:~i'~' C'"K~ ini'ilr-l ii:l:!l mil'" ~~'IV' (12)

1'- •• T T .: "T - • T

2) Even in the terminology revolving about "The Council of Yahweh in

Second Isaiah," discussed by FRANK M. CROSS, Jr. Uournal of Near Eastern Studies,
12 [1953], 274-277), one must be careful not to take literally what is simply "an-
cient literary pattern ... used as ... artistic device ... "
34 H. M. ORLINSKY

(6) I will say to the nonh, "Give up!"

And to the south, "Hold not back!"
Bring My sons from afar,
And My daughters from the ends of the earth. I)

(14) Thus said the Lord:

The wealth of Egypt
And the substance of Cush and the Sabeans ...
Shall pass over to you and be yours;
They shall follow you,
They shall come over in chains;
They shall bow low to you
And make supplication to you:
God is with you alone,
There is no other, no god besides Him .. .
(16) All of them are shamed and chagrined .. .
(17) But Israel is rescued by the Lord
In everlasting triumph ... 2)

1) 43.3-6 9~"~i~ l;l~?~: wi'R 9"trl;l~ mil" "~~ "~ (3)

:9"Pr;tlJ N~~~ w~:> C:'J~~ 9,!!?~ "l;1lJ~
9"n:ttl~ "~~1 ~1~~~ "~"~:t ~!R; .,W~~ (4)
:"'W!?~ tlttlJ C"?P~7~ 9"l;\r;tlJ C7~ llJ~1
"~~-9J;'1~ "~ N?"l;l-l;l~ (5)
::J~~R~ :l?~~~~ 9~!! N":;1~ n?i?p~
"~~~l;1-l;l~ 17t"lJ7~ "m li~~~ "~N (6)
:n!$iJ il~R~ "lJil:t~ i'in?~ "~~ "~":;1iJ
Here, too, we probably have rhetoric rather than-as many scholars believe
(cf., e.g., HARAN, p. 59)-specific geopolitics. Thus TORREY has noted at 43.3
(p. 334), " 'I give Egypt as thy ransom ... nations in thy stead.' The well-known
figure of speech, meaning simply, 'Ye are dearer to me than the other peoples .. .' "
And DE BOER, e.g., has noted (p. 42, at 40.28 and 41.1; cf. pp. 89 f.), "coastlands.
This expression possesses the same meaning as the ends of the earth, i.e. the whole
earth .. ." This is, clearly, in keeping with the expressions "east ... west ... north ...
south ... from afar ... ends of the earth."
Although my own interpretation of the problem at large would not suffer, I
cannot agree with E. J. HAMlIN, who would limit "The Meaning of 'Mountains
and Hills' in 1sa. 41: 14-16" (journal of Near Eastern Studies, 13 [1954], 185-90)
specifically to Babylonia and her heathenism; the use of C"iiJ and tli~~~ in both
Isaiahs and elsewhere in the Bible, as well as our own immediate context, scarcely
justifies this kind of specific restriction.
2) 45.14-17 mil" .,~~ il~ (14)
il'~ "WlN C"N:lO~
T"":- 'T:
w~:>-"no~
-:
C""~~ ~"l"
.-:.-.:
 CHAPTER THREE 35

In chapter 47, for the first and only time in all of Second Isaiah,
a reason is given for the downfall of a gentile nation, Babylonia; it is
the same as that given in chapter 37 (and in the parallel section in II Ki.
19) for the downfall of Sennacherib and Assyria, namely, that
Babylonia ignored the central role of God in making her merely the
rod of His punishment of Israel, and, instead, regarded herself as the
all-powerful one; in addition, it is charged, she maltreated Israel ruth-
lessly, beyond the call of duty; for these reasons she will be punished
(vv.5-15):
(5) Sit in silence, and go into darkness,
o daughter of the Chaldeans;
For you shall no more be called
The mistress of kingdoms.
(6) I was angry with My people,
So I profaned My heritage;
I gave them into your hand,
But you showed them no mercy;
On the aged you laid heavy yoke.
(7) You said, "I shall be mistress for ever...
(8) I shall not sit as a widow
Or know the loss of children...
You said in your heart: I am,
And there is no one besides Me,"
(11) But calamity shall come upon you ...
Disaster shall fall upon you ...
And ruin shall come upon you suddenly,
Of which you know nothing .. .1)
~'?~~ c'~P~ ~~?~ ':J~jr)~ ~';;t~ ':J7' ~.,~~~ ':J~?~
~'~;ilJ;1~ ':J~?~ ~'r)13tf'~ ':J~?!:t,
:C'rl'~ 0!t~ 'ii17 1'~' ,~ 1~ ':J~
:~'Vli~ 'W;o/~ ,tr"~ "l'l139~ ,~ :"IJ;1~ 'P.tt (15)
:C''''~ 'It';"n :"I1l'l':l:l:J ~~':"I '''Tn' C,:l:l 1~'~l-Cl' ~!Vb (16)
I' • •. T T T': - : T T: - hT". :: • -:

C'~7i17 Z'1~~!VT;l m:"l'~ 17Wil "'!:t'o/~ (17)

:'i;li '~7i17-'i~ ~~7fJ:1-N", ~!v:Jt1-N''''
1) 47.5-15 C'Jo/~-Z'1~ ':J~n~ ,~~~ C~~'i '~~ (5)
:Z'1i?7~~ Z'1}~~ ':'J7-~NiR~ ';>'~iZ'1 ~, '~
'J:17m 'T;l7~1J ,~~-,~ 'T;l!?~~ (6)
c'~tn C:j7 ~~W-N" ':J,;:;t C~T;l~'
:'i~~ ':J:r~ T;l1~i" 1i(.!-'~
36 H. M. ORLINSKY

There is hardly need to cite additional passages in this vein to justify

the assertion that, on Second Isaiah's view, Israel suffered destruction
at home and captivity in Babylonia abroad only because she had
transgressed her covenant with God; Babylonia, on the other hand,
having no covenant with God and being under no legal obligation to
Him, committed no such transgression. It was but the rod of God's
anger and punishment against sinful Israel, and the helpless witness
and victim of God's might and of God's restoration of His beloved
and chosen Israel to her homeland.
There is, of course, so much more to be said about Second Isaiah's
attitude toward Babylonia and the gentile world in general. But one
additional aspect must be brought out clearly, namely, that nothing
could have been farther from the prophet's mind than that Israel
was in existence for the welfare of the nations, or that other nations
could achieve equality with Israel in God's scheme of things. This

,!: m::ll il'ilN c,;!:, '''~N1'I' (7)

- ... hT: '::... T : • : -

:l'Ip'in~ T;l'1~! N' '~7-'~ il7~ T;l??W-N'

"'0::1,
-':T
n::lWi"il ill"!: nNT-'!:~tzj il1'lli" (8)
':": - T .-: .:. T-;

,;!: 'OtlN' 'IN l'I::I::I'~ il"~Nil

A .: -: .-: T T:' T: T

:';?I!' !:j~ N', il~7t7~ ::I~~ N'

'IJ~ C;'f l)~? il7~-'tll!' ,~ il~N::I~' (9)
'~~W ~N~ C~\1:P 1~7~' ,;:ll!'
:,~?? ':~~n n~~Wf ':I;)~:p ::I'1f
,~~., r~ T;l'1~~ ,tlW?=iI 'l:tf?=iI~1 (lO)
,l;l?=iI;tzj N'iJ ,tl!yj, 'tl7t~1J
:,;~ 'Q~~' '~~ '~7=i1'!,?N1'I1
l'I?J;lW '~·m N' ilW? ':~W N~~ (11
l'IJ~~ '7~~n N' il;il ':~W ,e%},
:'~'tl N' il~;tzj CNJ;1~ ':~W N::Im
'~I;)~:p ::I'1=i1~ ':~~n;1 N~-"??~ (12)
:'~;i~t1 '~~N "~;il '7~~1'1 '~~N '~J~l)~~ T;l~~; .,~~~
,~'1Vi" N~-~',?~~ ,:n~~ ::I'1 f n'~7~ (13)
C'~~;:;)~ C'tMiJ C~~~ [K= ,.,::Iil; Q=] 'j=ilil
:'~~W ~N:"; .,~~~ C't;ijt17 C~";~
Cljl;l..,i;' tzj~ tzjR~ ~'V il~iJ (14)
il::lil' '"~ Ctzjtll-nN ~"!lt'-N'
ATT': ., T:- ': .-

:;"H~ n~~7 "~N C7tJ;l~ n7m-r~

'~j~l)~~ '~~nb T;l~ .~; .,~~ '7-~'iJ l;? (15)
:,~'t;i;~ r~ ~l)J;l ;"=ilW7 tzj't:t
 CHAPTER THREE 37

may be a very noble and worthy concept, one that would do credit
even to the nations of our own twentieth century; but it is unfair and
historically unjustifiable to read this concept back into Israelite think-
ing two and a half millennia ago.
An excellent case in point is provided by Isa. 56.7, where scholars
generally have found the last clause to be the very essence of inter-
nationalism: " ... for My House shall be called a House of prayer for
all peoples" (c'~~~-';!~? N'Jre~ i17~T;l-l"l'~ '.\l'~ ':p ••• ). But this inter-
pretation can be gotten out of the text only by wilfully ignoring or
perverting the context, i.e., by eisegesis. For the context (vv. 3-7)
asserts unequivocally that it is only the eunuchs and the aliens (-"9
'~m'~~~·· ,c't;I) "who observe My sabbaths and choose what I delight
in and hold fast to My covenant... who attach themselves to the Lord
to serve Him and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants-all
who observe the sabbath and de not profane it and who hold fast to
My covenant-these I will bring to My holy mountain and cause them
to rejoice in My House of prayer; their burnt offerings and their
sacrifices shall be acceptable upon My altar, for My House shall be
called a House of prayer for all peoples." 1) In other words, only
those foreigners who have already converted to God's Torah and
accepted the covenant are welcome in His House! (As to whether this
section is original or the product of a later hand-that is a separate
problem and does not concern us here.)

1) 56.3-8 ,bN7 mi1'-';!!;t i1'?~tr '~m-T~ '~N;'-';!~~ (3)

i~~ ';!~~ mi1' ,~'?,'~~ ';!,~tr
mi1' ,~tt i1~-':P (4)
:~~~ f:P. '~~ Tu O'i~tr '~N;'-';!~'
'l"lil"l~~-l"lN
-:- ...
~,~~,
::"
'~N
... -:
C'O"O';!
"T-

:'f,I"~~ C'R'm~~ 'T:l~~lJ ,~~~ ~'t!:t~

•• T " - 'l"lbin:l~
C~, - : . . . : Ci1';!
'l"l':I~ ": T 'Z'll"ll'
• - T: (5)

:l"l'f~ N';! ,~ ;';!-m!;t C7i17 C~ l"li~~~~ c'~~~ :Ii"

mi1' C~-l"lN
.....
i1:1i1N';!~
T-:-:
il"l'~';!
:T:
mi1'-';!17- c"';!~i1
":.-
'~3i1
T
'l:l~ (6)
O. - •• :

:'f,I"~~ C'R'm~~ i';!7tr~ l"l~~ '~iV-';!f C'j:t~'? i';! l"li';;T7

'.\l7~T;ll"l'~f C'T:lJ;l~~' '~'R ,tr-';!!;t C'.\liN'~m (7)
'nfr~-';!~ Ti~,? C;;r'!J~n c;;r't1';!i17
:c'~~~-';!~? N'Jre~ i17~T;l-l"l'~ '.\l'~ ':P
';!~'!f'~ '!J'~ f~~~ mi1' '~"T~ C!:.t~ (8)
:"i$~R~? "7~ p~~ ,i17
38 H. M. ORLINSKY

Or compare, e.g., Isaiah 14.1-2, where the alien may become

attached to triumphant and restored Israel, whereas, on the other
hand, the gentile peoples who had oppressed them will become their
slaves. This statement, clearly, is not internationalism at all, except that
it is arbitrarily made so by ignoring the true force of verse 1, the great
victory of Israel and the consequent desire of some aliens to join her:

The Lord will pardon (or have compassion on) Jacob and will again
choose Israel, and He will set them in their own land; and aliens will join
them, attaching themselves to the house of Israel.
and by suppressing altogether verse 2:

The people will take them and bring them to their place; and the
house of Israel will possess them in the Lord's land as male and female
slaves, making captives of their captors and ruling over their oppressors.!)
The same thought is expressed elsewhere in the Bible. Thus Zech-
ariah 2.14-16 asserts plainly that only the gentiles who join Israel in
her restored homeland can become part of God's people and that it is
only in Zion that God will dwell:
"Shout for joy, Fair Zion! For 10, I come, and I will dwell in your
midst," declares the Lord. In that day, many nations will attach themselves
to the Lord and become His (lit. My) people, and He (lit. "I") will dwell
among you; then you will know that the Lord of Hosts sent me to you.
And the Lord will take Judah to Himself as His portion upon the holy
land, and He will choose Jerusalem once more. 2 )

1) Most scholars emend C'7p~ to C?f~ ("they will take them [viz., the i? of
verse 1] with them"); our argument is not affected thereby. The Hebrew text of
verse~ 1-2 reads:

C!T7~ i?0 rt'7~J Cn~7~-'~ CIJ'mJ 't\'~:'f ii:s7 ilJ~~ :lP~~-l"l~ mrt' CtT,); '~
,~ 't\'~:'-l"l'~ C~'mJ;l0J c~ip~-'~ C~N':;1m C'7p~ c~nR7~ ::lR~~ l"l'~-'~ ~n~i?~J
:CiJ'iP.~f ~i'J Cv'~iLi7 c':;1iLi ~'vJ l"li!J9~7J C''j~~~ mrt' 1"l~7~
MOSHE WEINFELD recently dealt with the passages discussed here (and in n. 2
following), in his article on "Universalism and Particularism in the Period of
Exile and Restoration" (in Hebrew; Tarbi§, 33 [1964/5724], 228-242, especially
231 ff.). In missing the points made here, he was following uncritically his mentor,
YEHEZKEL KAUFMANN; see the several references to the latter's-'rt rtm~Nrt mi"l"l
l"l"Nitl.', especially (in notes 38, 59, and 60) to vol. 8 (Tel-Aviv, 5716/1956).
2) Zech. 2.14-16

'm,
mrt'-'~ C'~l C:,il ~'7~J :rt,rt'-Ct'~ 1~il"l:t 'T:l~~~J N~-'~~0'~ li:~-l"l~ 'l:t1?~J 'r~
:1:'~t\ 'm7~ l"liN~~ rt,rt'-'~ J;l~'J;J 1~il"l:t 'T:l~~~J C~7 '7 ~'vJ N~rt0 ci'~
:I;l~~~i'~ i;:s7 ilJ~~ tzj':;r~t11"1~7~ ,~ ip71J rt'J~rt;-l"l~ mrt'
 CHAPTER THREE 39

Or compare in this connection such passages as Isa. 49.22-23 and

66.18-24, written by quite different authors:

(22) Thus said the Lord God:

I wil raise Myhand to nations

And lift up My ensign to peoples;
And they shall bring your sons in their bosoms,
And carry your daughters on their shoulders.
(23) Kings shall be your attendants,
Their queens shall serve you as nurses.
They shall bow to you, face to the ground,
And lick the dust of your feet.
And you shall know that I am the Lord-
Those who trust in Me shall not be shamed. I )
and
(18) ... to gather all the nations and tongues; they shall come and
behold My glory. (19) I will set a sign among them, and send from
them survivors to the nations: to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud-that draw
the bow-to Tubal, Javan, and the distant coasts, that have never
heard My fame or beheld My glory. They shall declare My glory
among these nations. (20) And out of all the nations they shall bring
all your brothers on horses, in chariots and drays, on mules and
dromedaries, to Jerusalem, My holy mountain, said the Lord, as an
offering to the Lord-just as the Israelites bring an offering in a pure
vessel to the House of the Lord. (21) And from them likewise I will
take some to be levitical priests, said the Lord.

(22) For as the new heaven and the new earth

Which I will make
Shall endure by My will
-declares the Lord-
So shall your seed and your name endure.

1) 49.22-23 m;,' 'tn~ '~I$-;'~ (22)

'03 C"N C'~:si-l;lN' ", C'il-l;lN NWN m;,
h" • T • - ... : 'T' ... T ': •••

:;'~Nif.~T:l ~lJ~-l;l~ ,:r'lJl;~ n~i"I~ ,:n~ ~N'~m

1:lJP'~'~ cry'lJi,W, T~7?N C'!;l77? ~'v, (23)
~~n~~ 1:~n ';;l~) 17 ~'nt1~: n~ c:~~
:'JP ~w:J~-Nl;l 'W~ m;,' '~~-':;> J;1~j;'
40 H. M. ORLINSKY

(23) And new moon after new moon,

And Sabbath after Sabbath,
All flesh shall come to worship Me
-said the Lord.
(24) They shall go out and gaze
On the corpses of the men who rebelled against Me:
Their worms shall not die,
Nor their fire be quenched;
They shall be a horror
To all flesh. 1)
Even in the extremely difficult latter part of Isaiah 19, verses
18-25, which is doubtless eclectic and derives from more than one
historical background (cf., e.g., GEORGE B. GRAY, ICC on Isaiah, 1912,
pp. 332 fr.), it tends to be overlooked that Egypt will first be crushed
(vv. 1-17, 22, 23) before it recognizes the authority of Israel's God,
and that in forming a triumvirate with Egypt and Assyria, Israel will
constitute a blessing in the world, i.e., it is through Israel that they
will be blessed. However, this composite section can hardly, as it
stands, serve as the basis for any theory-except for those who would
proceed per ignotum ad ignotius.
The Israelite composers of the Bible recognized God as the only
God in the universe. He was the Creator, the sole Creator, of the whole
world; He, and He alone, brought all peoples into being and deter-
mined their careers; everyone and everything-even though they
1) 66.18-24 (the first part of v. 18 is corrupt):
~~?' ~~~~ mliVi~m t:l:i~iJ-"f-l1~ Pi(,? il~9 t:lV'~i:l~J;I~~ t:lV'~~~ ':;ll~' (18
i~'" : "~e Vi'Vi'l'I
. : - t:l'Uil-"~
• - '.. t:l'~'''e ':.. 'l'In,Vi,
. .. : t:lil~ . : - • : l1i~ t:lil::!
... T 'l'I~'
. : - : (19) :'ii::!::l-l1~
I':'"

·,i::!!?-l1~ ~~?-~'''' ·~'?t?i-11~ ~31,?~-N" ,~~ t:l'P"iO t:l:~~01J~' ";~l'Il1~R .~~~

i11il'" ilnl~ t:l'im-"::l~ t:l~'n~-"::l-l1~ ~~'::!i11 (20) :t:l·U~ 'ii::!::l-l1~ ~i'~i11
- T:' .- T' ':"-: T ': .0:
• •' : 1'-': ':

,~~:;p il~il' ,~~ !;l~~~'~ ·t?i1j:! ,iJ .,~ l1i'fi~;~ t:l"1~;~ t:l'~~;~ ::!?1~~ t:l.t;>~~~
t:l'.1~~ t:l'~!:1~~ n~~ t:lij~-t:l~1 (21) :il1il' 11'~ ,ii1tt '7:t~ i1tJ~tpiJ-l1~ "~1ip: .~~ ~~.~~
:il,il' ,~~

il~31 .~~ ,~~ il~10iJ n~;:" t:l·t?il0tl t:l:~'tI ,~~~ ':p (22)
:t:l?,?q?; t:l?~i! ib~~ l~ il1il·-t:ltt~ '~9'? t:l",?l1
il'l~Vi~ l1~Vi '':T~~ iViin~ Vii"-'':T~ il'i11 (23)
,,--: T-'" :T: ...... TTl

:i11il' ,~~ 'll:l" l1inl'lViil" 'iV::! -.,~ ~i::!'

I - T -T: -: - : .: T T T T

.~ t:l'31Vieil t:l'Vil~;' "ll:l~ ~~" ~~:s., (24)

A' .: - • T-: T •• : . : T: : T:

il~~l1 N" t:l!t;!~, m~l1 N" t:ll'l31.,il1 '::l

': : • T • : T T : - •

:'W~-,,~'? Ti~1' ~·v,

 CHAPTER THREE 41

were not cognizant of it-were beholden to Him. At the same time,

however, not one of all these peoples, apart from Israel, was God's
covenanted people. So that while God was-to the biblical writers-a
universal God, He was not an international God, but a national God,
the God of no nation in the universe but Israel. An excellent statement
of this is expressed in Amos 9.7, where the prophet declares:
You are like the Cushites to Me,
o Israelites
-declares the Lord.
I brought up Israel from the land of Egypt,
And the Philistines from Caphtor,
And the Arameans from Kir. I )
Since Israel's God is the only deity in the world, who else but He is
responsible for all events involving nature and man? Ethiopia, Phili-
stia, Aram-all lands and peoples everywhere are His to act upon as
He sees fit. (Note how Amos expresses the identical concept in 1.3-2.3,
discussed briefly above.) But this does not make God the God of the
Ethiopians, or of the Philistines, or of the Arameans! He is the God of
Israel exclusively, by legal and binding contract, by the covenant.
Israel's God is a universal God, not an international God. 2)
1) m;"-CNl I;!N'i" 'l:l 'I;! Cl'lN C"W:l 'l:J:l Nil;!;,
h ... : •• T :. ..: • •.. - •• ".. ..:. -:

C~j~~ f}!;t1,1 'J:"l'~~v I;!~'if'~-n!;t Nil;!n

:"R.~ C'~1 'il'l,?~~ C'~l.'l;;7,?~
Cf. my discussion, "Who is the Ideal Jew: the Biblical View," in Judaism, 13
(1964), 19-28, where I deal with this passage (and others) in Amos, with Lev.
19.18; Malachi 2.10; Ps. 24; etc.
2) For a different approach to the problem, in re Second Isaiah, see S. H. BLANK,
"Studies in Deutero-Isaiah" (Hebrew Union College Annual, 15 [1940], 1 ff.) and
"Israel's God is God" and "And Israel is his Prophet" (respectively chaps. IV
and V in Prophetic Faith in Isaiah [New York, 1958], pp. 49-73 and 74-116); cf.
also JULIAN MORGENSTERN, "Deutero-Isaiah's Terminology for 'Universal God' "
Uournal of Biblical Literature, 62 [1943], 269-280), and now "The Suffering Servant-
a New Solution" (Vetus Testamentum, 11 [1961], 292-320, 406-431; 13 [1963],
321-332). See in general the section on "Particularism and Universality ... of
the Prophets" in my Ancient Israel (Cornell University Press, 1954), pp. 163 ff.,
with the references in n. 14 to FLEMING JAMES (Personalities of the Old Testament
[New York, 1939], p. 263) and N. H. SNAITH (op. cit., p. 191) as "Of the very few
scholars who have noted the essential nationalism of Second Isaiah." So that DE
BOER underestimated the numerical strength of the non-universalists (more
correctly: non-internationalists) by two-thirds when he wrote (p. 84), "there are
of course shades in the opinions of the interpreters ofIsaiah xl-Iv ...It is the more
notable that we find a virtual unanimity of opinion about universalism in the
conception of God and the task of Yhwh's servant. I know but one exception,
N. H. SNAITH ... "
42 H. M. ORLINSKY

Let us now see how this concept manifested itself in Second Isaiah.
God, we are told in 40.10,
Like a shepherd He pastures His flock:
He gathers the lambs in His arms ...
whereas, in v. 17:
All nations are as nought before Him,
Accounted by Him as less than nothing.!)

Throughout, Second Isaiah uses terms of endearment in reference to

Israel.
Comfort, oh comfort My people,
Says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem ... 2)

is how he begins his message (40.1-2). In chapter 41 (vv. 8, 12-14) he

will assert:
(8) But you, 0 Israel, My servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
Seed of Abraham My beloved...

One cannot get very far in this basic problem from a reading of PETER ALTMANN,
Erwahlungstheologie und Universalismus im Alten Testament (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift
fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, No. 92, 1964,31 pp.), where the author insists
that Israel's covenant with God involves-rather than excludes-the other nations
of the world. There are so many non-sequiturs and the like that the study seemed
based on the motto: credo quia absurdum.
1) Isa. 40.10, 17 i~ i17~~ ilhp ~i:J; PJOf mi1' 'tr~ i1m (10)
:"l~'? ili~17~~ il'l~ i'~iv mi1
IT T : T ... : • T: •••

:;~-~:J~J;9 ~i1i1~ C~~~ ;'W 1:~:P c:W:r-'?f (17)

Similarly, in 42.22 ff. (see the Hebrew text on p. 25, n. 1), when the prophet
refers to Israel's involuntary presence in Babylonia, he asserts unequivocally,
in the name of God:
Who was it gave over Jacob to despoilment,
Israel to plunderers,
If not the Lord Himself, against whom we sinned!
They would not follow His ways
And would not heed His Teaching ...
Babylonia is but God's helpless rod for punishing Israel, and possesses no in-
dependent authority whatever.
2) 40.1-2 :C?"i.f'?~ ,~~, '~~ ~~m ~~m (0
...
t;J~W~'; :J7.-'?~ ~'~'J (2)
 CHAPTER THREE 43

(12) Less than nothing shall be

The men who battle against you.
(13) For I the Lord am your God,
I hold you by the hand,
I say to you: Have no fear;
I will be your help.
(14) Fear not, 0 worm Jacob ...
I will help you-declares the Lord-
I your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,1)
This hardly sounds like an appeal to Babylonia or any other gentile
nation to recognize God and become part of His covenanted people.
Or as the prophet put it in the verses (15-16) immediately following:
(15) I will make of you a threshing-sledge,
Sharp, new, with many spikes.
You shall thresh the mountains to dust,
And make the hills like chaff.
(16) You shall winnow them
And the wind shall carry them off,
The whirlwind shall scatter them.
But you 2) shall rejoice in the Lord,
And glory in the Holy One of Israel. 3)
It is unlikely that Second Isaiah is promising here his fellow exiles
military conquest of Babylonia or of any other nation; the exiles,
in the midst of their mighty masters, would, with justification,

1) 41.8, 12-14 ~'mtrf ,~~ :lp~~ "~~ !;!~nif': ;'J;l~' (8)

:';mN eiJ"l~~ 171!
~D~~ 'W~~ e~~7?l} N'!;!' eWNT;l (12)
:~P/?tr7~ 'W~~ o~~~~ r~~ ~'i?
~J"~; i"m~ ~'t.f!;!!$ m;,' '~~ '~ (13)
:~'Pi!~ '~~ N"l'T;1-!;!~ ~7 '~NiJ
!;!~?if': 'tl7? :lp~~ l'1~7i1'l '~i'l;1-!;!~ (14)
:!;!~?if': ttii,p 17.~P' m;,'-e~~ 9'T;1i!~ '~~
2) Note the pronoun ;'J;l~' and its emphatic position.
3) 41.15-16 lii:!;l'~ !;!~~ W71J Y~'IJ l1i~7 l'T;1/?W m;:1 (15)
:e'~J;l yb~ l'1i17~t~ i"m e'''iJ tti~'J;l
en-iN Y'!;lJ;l ;"~9~ e~WT;1 tr~" ejrl;l (16)
:!;!~'!1l'\1'! !;!~,"1,.~'. ttii,i'? m;,'~ !;!W1 ;'11~",
44 H. M. ORLINSKY

regard him as mad. In good rhetorical manner he is simply assuring

them that God and His covenant would prevail over all else. TORREY,
his theory of Israel's mission to the gentile nations rather embarassed
by the blunt statement of our passage, resorts to this kind of exposi-
tion (p. 317), "Those whom Israel is to 'thresh' and 'shatter' are not
the heathen nations in general nor any of the surrounding nations in
particular, but the wicked [italics in original], of all races and lands; the
incorrigible enemies of Yahwe and the religion of righteousness ... "
It is interesting how the utterly nationalistic statements of our prophet
are diluted and "extended" in order to make them express inter-
nationalism and to support Israel's alleged mission to the world. Thus
DE BOER (p. 90), recognizes well that "No other conclusion can be
drawn from our texts than the statement: Second-Isaiah's only pur-
pose is to proclaim deliverance for the Judean people. 'Yhwh bares
his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the
earth see the salvation of our God['] Iii 10. Foreign nations are but
mentioned as peoples to be conquered, in whose hands the cup of
wrath will be put, Ii 23; or as the instrument of Yhwh to deliver his
people; or, in rhetorical manner of speaking, to be witness of Yhwh's
glory. Yhwh's glory will be shown only in his elected people, raised
up from their humiliation. If the interpretation which reads a world-
wide missionary task of the servant in the so-called first and second
song ofYhwh's servant and in chapters Ii and Iv is right, we must state
that the expressions where upon this interpretation is based are a
corpus alienum in the book of Second-Isaiah. Are they an alien element
indeed? .. " One may well ask: Would anyone, prior to the rise of
post-biblical Judaism and Christianity, have thought of creating such
a corpus alienum and then introducing it into the text and context of
Second Isaiah as the basic, original element? Herein lay the crux
of the matter: scholarship unfree of the tradition and interests of time
and place.
Whether or not the reference to "Cyrus" in 44.28 and 45.1 is
original, the fact is that the gentile nations and kings will be-not
saved or converted-but mercilessly overcome, all for the sake of
God's name and Israel's welfare; as put in the first part of the chapter
(vv.4-6):
... (4) For the sake of My servant Jacob,
Israel My chosen...
(6) That it may be known,
 CHAPTER THREE 45

From the rising of the sun and from the west,

That there is none besides Me,
I am the Lord, there is none other... 1)
When we read in chap. 43 (vv. 3-6):
(3) For I the Lord am your God,
The Holy One of Israel who brings you triumph ...
(5) Do not fear, for I am with you:
I will bring your offspring from the east,
And from the west I will gather you;
(6) I will say to the north, "Give up!"
And to the south, "Do not withhold!" ... 2)
it is hardly "good tidings" that the prophet was announcing to the
gentile peoples of the earth. And the same is true, e.g., in chap. 48,
where God calls out (vv. 12-14):
(12) Hearken to Me, 0 Jacob,
Israel whom I called...
(14) The Lord loves him.
whereas, so far as Babylonia is concerned,
He shall perform His will on Babylonia,
And His arm on the Chaldeans. 3 )

1) 45.4-6 'J'''~ '~'!f~' ~p~~ ,,:t~ 7~~7 (4)

:'m¥17 N'1 ~n~~ '9~o/~ '97 N'~~'
N',
c'n"~ 1'~ 'J:l7~T ,i:>7 r~' m;,' '~~ (5)
lD1?~-n'1Pp~ ~:>71.: 7~~7 (6) :'m~j~ '9,,)~~~
:,;:>7 l'~' m;,' '~~ 'jt'7~ O!;l~-'~ ;'~'W~~~
2) 43.3-6 '9~t~i~ '~'!f~ lDi'~ '9'V·'~ m;,' '~~ '~ (3)
:'9'PI;I!:l N~9~ lD~:!l c~'1~~ '9,,)~~ 'T;1lJ~
'9'Ntr~ '~~J ~1~~~ '~'v.:t J;l,,)R~ ,~~~ (4)
:'9;;~~ mm C'7ptt7~ '9'tll;l!:l C11$ lt1~1
"~~-'9T;l~ '~ N"T;1-'~ (5)
:1~~R~ ~,~~~~ '9~")I N'~l$ n'T7p~
'~~~T;1-'~ 77ttl7~ 'm 7iEl~7 '~k (6)
:n~v m~~~ 'lJil:t~ pin,~ '~~ '~'~v
3) 48.12-14 '~'Pl? '~'!f~' ~P~~-'7~ :>7~o/ (12)
qillJ,~ 'R~ ~~ 1ilDN'1 '~~ N~;'-'~~
c:~~ ;'O~f? '~'~'1 r?~ ;'19~ "~-~~ (13)
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 4
46 H. M. ORLINSKY

One may well ask at this point: Is it for this that Israel is supposed
to have suffered vicariously? Of course the "problem" disappears
if "Babylonia" and "Chaldeans" are deleted from the text-which is
what TORREY does. But then, those who hold to the theory of Israel's
mission to the gentile nations and her vicarious suffering for their
welfare, must, as in all the passages cited above, and below, likewise
ignore the clear import of such a passage as 48.20-22: "Depart from
Babylon, Flee from the Chaldeans! With a shout of joy... Say: the
Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob ... There is no peace, said, the
Lord, for the wicked." 1) Why should the Judeans "flee" from exile
and amidst "shouts of joy," and why should it be Israel, rather than
gentile nations, whom the Lord is about to redeem-unless it is
precisely because Israel is God's people whom He is redeeming among
the idolatrous gentile nations in whose midst Israel was exiled in
punishment for her sins.

Or take chap. 49. Verse 7 asserts clearly:

Thus says the Lord,
The Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
To one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
The servant of rulers:
"Kings shall see and stand up;
Princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,
Because of the Lord, who is faithful,
The Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you." 2)

:"I;I~ ~i~~~ c!j'7~ ';~ NiP

~~~-Tl~ i'~lJ CV~ '~ ~37'i~ C:;I7~ ~:S:~~0 (14)
:c'':fiV:ll i37"m "!l!l~ i:S:!:ln ~iV37' i!l~N m~'
." ; - ,; ': T : :... •.. - : - .. - :

1) 48.20-22 C'':ffV:ll~
• : - •
~n.,~
: •
"!l~~
': T •
~N:S:: (20)
Tl~T ~37'~~(J ~i'~(J ~~i "ij:'~
n~v ~~R-i~ V~N'~i~
:!l~~~ i"~~ m~' ,,~~ ~.,~~
C~'7i~ Tli!l,pf. ~N~;t ~'" (21)
:C7~ ~!l!~) "~:S:-37R~~) i~~ .,~;g:~ C7~ "'m
:C'f.'~'17 m~' ,~~ ci"~ 1'~ (22)
2) 49.7 iWiiR "~'if7 ,,~~ m~'-'~~ ~:ll
c'''Wi~ i!l37" 'U !l37Tl~" !V!:ll-~t!l"
• : ....,. : •• T :. .,. ': :.

~~r!tl~' C'i~ ~~R' ~N'l7 C'~77?

:::JJt'~~) ,,~,~ !ViR l'i~B 'W~ ~w W~7
 CHAPTER THREE 47

Lest, however, the reader jump to the conclusion that the expression
"they shall prostrate themselves" (~'!:!P~7') points to conversion, to
acceptance of Israel's God and His teachings, let him but continue to
read on, to the end of the chapter (vv. 8-26). He will read, e.g., in
v.13,
Sing for joy, 0 heavens, and exult, 0 earth!
Break forth, 0 mountains, into song!
For the Lord comforts His people,
Will show compassion to His afflicted ones,
whereas, the Lord assures His people (v. 22a),
Thus said the Lord God:
I will lift up My hand against the nations
And raise My standard against the peoples.1)
Indeed, it is in this very context that the most vigorously nationalistic
statements of the prophet are expressed:
(22b) And they 2) shall bring your sons in their bosom,
And your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.
(23) Kings shall be your foster fathers,
And their queens your nursing mothers.
With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you
And lick the dust of your feet ...
(26) I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
And they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.
Then all flesh shall know
That I the Lord am your Savior,
And your Redeemer, the Champion of Jacob! 3)

1) 49.13,22a iJrJ t:I~'1:' ~n~~~ n~ ~7W t:l7~~ ~r'1 (13)

:t:ln.,~
1"-:
'"3:;"
T'-:-
i~:;,
-
:'ni1~ t:lm-~~
- ..

:'ni1' ~~'T~ "~tt-i1:;' (22a)

'1:>3
"..
t:I~"~
• T
t:I,~:;,-,,~,
• - ... :
"~ t:I~i~-'~
'T' ...
~i1i'~
T'"
mi1
- •

2) Viz., the gentile nations, i.e., the whole world. This is, of course, pure
hyperbole-just as, e.g., "Proclaim it to the ends of the earth" in 4S.20a (see n. 1
on p. 46) is not to be taken literally.
3) 49.22b-26 :i1~~~~T;l ~tl~-,:p 17lJl~~ l~hf 17~~ ~~'~m (22b)
17lJf:"~'~ t:I(j'tli"~, 17~7?N t:I~~77? ~':" (23)
~::ln~7 17~~j ";l~~ 17 ~'t!~~7 n~ t:l7~~
:~jp ~el:J~-N' .,~~ :'ni1~ '~~-'~ l;I:P'J~'
48 H. M. ORLINSKY

It is almost beyond comprehension how the plain meaning of this

chapter is sometimes subverted by the "universalists" in order to
attribute to the prophet the idea of " ... the 'restoration,' the convers-
ion of the heathen nations, and the final status of Jews and Gentiles in
God's kingdom ... " (TORREY, pp. 380 f.). Far from thinking of the
alleged "conversion of the heathen nations," Second Isaiah expresses
but contempt for them; cf., e.g.; the scorn manifested for them precise-
ly in passages where Israel is exhorted to prepare for liberation (52.1,
11) :
,tlt 12~ "l?1i? "'1~17 "'1~17
tzj'JPtl '"~ t;l7~~'7 1l:l!~,?l) "jt~ "l?1!t7
:~~t;1l;1'JW ,;17 11-N!l~ ,]"9;" Nl;I"~
and
~~~l;\-l;I~ ~~t; t:I'f~ ~~~ ~,~o ~,~o
:1'1,1'1" "7f "~~l ~'~lJ i1:t;r-I~ ~~~

Again, TORREY asserts (p. 387), "The phrase ~:lIJ77 177t'J ,~~
[49.23, "They shall lick the dust of your feet"] means no more (and no
less) than the omnipresent 'he kissed the ground before him' in the
stories of the Thousand and One Nights, wherever king or caliph is
approached by one of his subjects." Of course not only is this "ex-
planation" less than convincing in context, but the statement three
verses farther on ("I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
And they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine") is
similarly dismissed with the statement (p. 388), "But the poet would
have been horrified by the thought that anyone would take his words
here as a literal prediction or wish"! It is clear that this is hardly a
literal prediction or wish; but then neither is it exactly an expression
of affection on the part of a conquered and humiliated people for her
mighty and insolent conqueror! One may rightly wonder by which
statement the poet would be horrified, by his own or by TORREY'S.
Something of a climax is reached in chapter 52. It begins with the
exhortation (see the Hebrew text above):

:~?~7 P":r~ "!;1~-t:l~1lJ;~7~ ,;~~~ n~~t) (24)

l'1W '1;l~ 1'1:'-"~ (25)
~~~7 Y"'1W lJ;P7~~ nR~ 'b~ "!;1~-t:l~
:~"W;~ ":;>l~ 17~~-n~1 !l"'1~ ":;>l~ 1~"'17-n~1
'~1f~7 t:I'r'J O"9~;;>1 t:I,~~-n~ 17~;~-n~ "l;\7~~m (26)
:!lR~~ '"!;1~ 17~l1 1~"l?1;~ ml'1" "~~ "~ '~1-l;I:t ~17'~1
 CHAPTER THREE 49

Awake, Awake,
Put on your garb of might, 0 Zion,
Put on your robes of splendor, 0 Jerusalem, holy City!
For no one uncircumcised or unclean
Shall enter you any more

because (verses 10-11)

The Lord will bare His holy arm
In the sight of all the nations,
And the very ends of the earth shall see
The victory of our God.
Away, away,
Depart from there!
Unclean! Touch it not!
Depart from her midst,
Cleanse yourselves,
You who bear the vessels of the Lord!

TORREY asserts (p. 406) that" 'There shall no longer enter thee the
uncircumcised and the unclean' ... means simply: Jerusalem will be
pure and holy, the abode of upright and God-fearing men; not foul
and wicked, as it is at present... The sentence has in it no hatred of
Gentiles, nor does it express a wish that Jerusalem may be reserved
for Jews only; see on the contrary 60: 11 and the many similar pas-
sages ... " One may well ask what N~r;11;1jW in 52.1 and ~~~l;I-1;I~ N~9
in v. 11 signify, if not the alien and heathen peoples, which is likewise
the only-and natural-frame of reference in which the term 1;Ij~ fits.
As to 60.11 ("Your gates shall always stay open, Day and night they
shall not be shut, To let in the wealth of nations, With their kings
conveying it [or, led in procession]"), not only is v. 10 immediately
preceding ignored in context ("Aliens shall rebuild your walls, Their
kings shall wait upon you, [For in anger I struck you down, But in
favor I take you back],,), and not only is v. 12 immediately following
("For the nation or the kingdom That does not serve you shall perish;
Such nations shall be laid waste") obliterated as "an addition by a later
hand, an exegetical appendage to tI'~~m (misunderstood)" (p. 451),
but the clear force of the hiph<il ("to bring in; be brought in; let in";
as against qal "to come in") is suppressed, 1;1'0 is rendered as "throng"
50 H. M. ORLINSKY

(as against "wealth"), and o"~~;,~ arbitrarily interpreted as "conducted

in state; personally conducted!"
As a matter of fact, not only will the uncircumcised and unclean
never again enter Israel's Holy City, but even those heathens who
had previously conquered and occupied the territory of Israel will
now be forced to quit her land. This is how our prophet put it (54.2-3;
the historical background is II Ki. 17.24 ff.) :

(2) Enlarge the site of your dwelling,

Let the cloths of your tent be extended;
Do not stint!
Lengthen the ropes, and drive the pegs firm.
(3) For you shall spread out to right and left,
As your offspring shall disposses nations
And settle the desolate towns. 1)

Someone-I am unable at the moment to locate the reference-

went so far as to assert that while it is true that God sent Israel into
exile as punishment for her sins, once Israel was already in exile God
decided to exploit the occasion and use Israel as a vicarius for the benefit
of Babylonia and other gentile nations; God, as it were, decided as an
afterthought to kill two birds with one stone. But apart from the clear
fact that the gentile nations, Babylonia included, were not going to
benefit from Israel's exile and God's restoration of His people, this
sort of "reasoning" smacks of subterfuge (on which see CADBURY'S
caveat, Introductory Statement above).
If there is any purpose in Israel's presence in Babylonia, other
than Israel's punishment for her sins, it is that the gentile nations (i.e.,
Babylonia and the world in general) may witness and experience, to
their great chagrin and discomfiture, God's might in behalf of Israel,
His boundless and exclusive love for His chosen people, exclusive
because the gentile nations were never associated with God's love.
For in contrast to his attitude toward the non-Israelite world, our
prophet constantly uses terms of endearment, compassion, and con-
solation for his fellow Israelites and for the devastated homeland.

1) 54.2-3 ~W~ ,:r'tlilf~~ %'\i3)"'''' 1~ntt oip,? "~"lJ"m (2)

:"RJtl17t1i tl'" 17'JtI"~ ":;l"'~rt ":;liz!J;1~-l;!~
1Z1,"7 07ia 1~tm "~~~l;Il;!,~~~~ 1"~~-"~ (3)
:~:J"tz,!i"
•• %'\i~lZ1l
- : 0"'3)'
• T :
 CHAPTER THREE 51

Without attempting here the compilation of a complete list of these

terms, attention may be drawn, e.g., to such expressions as "Comfort,
oh comfort My people ... Speak tenderly to Jerusalem" (40.1-2; there
is never any comfort or tenderness for non-Israelites); Israel alone as
God's flock and lambs whom He will gather (v. 11); the Israelite
exiles-never the gentile peoples-as weary and spent, but whose trust
in God will bring them renewal of strength (v. 31); Israel-never any
gentile nation-as "My servant," "Jacob, you whom I have chosen,"
and Abraham as "My beloved" (or favorite, friend; ~~ilN; 41.8);
Jacob as God's "worm" and God as Israel's-never anyone else's-
"Redeemer" and "Holy One" (v. 14) ; the Israelites as "the poor and
the needy, seeking water... " (v. 17); the exiles as blind and imprison-
ed (42.17); Israel-never the other peoples-frequently exhorted not
to fear·, God as Israel's "Maker"" "Creator" and "Fashioner" (431· .,
44.21,24); and so on.
In fine, then, Israel cannot be the central personage in Isaiah 53.

c
VICARIOUS SUFFERING IN ISAIAH 53-A THEOLOGICAL
AND SCHOLARLY FICTION

It is generally agreed among scholars that the original Hebrew text

of our brief chapter of twelve verses is not altogether intact: there are
several verses that cannot be translated as they stand, and other verses
hardly belong there in the first place. However, we shall propose no
emendations and deal with the passages that concern us in their
preserved, traditional form.
The aspect of vicariousness has been found in our chapter by
theologian and scholar alike for nigh on two thousand years. But does
this aspect really obtain in our text? Is the personage in chapter 53,
whoever it may be, a vicarius: did he really act as a substitute for the
guilty who deserved punishment because of their iniquity, but who
escaped it because this personage, while himself innocent of sin, bore
their punishment for them?
It is remarkable how virtually every scholar dealing with the sub-
ject has merely taken it for granted that the principle of vicariousness
is present in Isaiah 53; thus, e.g., NORTH has no discussion of it at all,
nor TORREY, et al. No one proves it, everyone assumes it. So that when
EISSFELDT, e.g., asserts ("The Ebed-Jahwe," etc., p. 265), "Finally,
52 H. M. ORLINSKY

the last Servant Song, which by its unique content (the discovery of
the significance of vicarious death) stands on a pinnacle by itself... ,"
it is actually he himself, in common with the other members of the
theological and scholarly guilds in post-biblical times, who has made
the discovery, not the author of Isaiah 53. (See below, § D and nn.
1-2 on p. 60, for evidence that even "death" is a post-biblical discovery
in Isa. 53). Not only that, the gratuitous assumption of vicariousness in
this chapter has led directly and uncritically to the widespread opinion
that this is "the most wonderful bit of religious poetry in all literature"
(TORREY, p. 409; I wonder whether anyone has read the "religious
poetry in allliteraturel"); or cf. NORTH'S approval (p. 176) of LUDWIG
KOHLER'S statement that" 'he opened not his mouth' (ver. 7) .. .is
'the most beautiful and expressive Nachklang in the whole writing .. .'."
What would the scholars have said of J er. 11.19 and many other pas-
sages had vicariousness been discovered there?
KISSANE is typical of scholarship in assuming vicariousness in
Isaiah 53. Thus he writes (The Book of Isaiah, vol. II, p. 178), and
correctly so, "There is still less reason for identifying the suffering
servant with the prophets or the teachers. Individual prophets were
innocent and suffered (e.g. Jeremiah), but their suffering was not the
expiation of the sins of men .. ." Yet he assumes "vicarious suffering
of the servant" in vv. 3d-5 (p. 186), and asserts sweepingly (p. 177),
in v. 10b-d, "Here the servant is a sacrificial victim chosen by God
to make expiation for the sins of men by his suffering and death ...
Jahweh's purpose .. .is fulfilled by the servant's vicarious suffering
and death."
Even more revealing in this connection is the forthright statement
by LINDBLOM (p. 50), "It is true that the idea of vicarious suffering is
not indicated in the parts of the text which surround the fourth
Servant oracle [viz., chaps .52-53]." Yet this most sober and reliable of
all the Scandinavian scholars follows immediately with: "But this is of
no import. To the compiler of the Book of Deutero-Isaiah it was
quite sufficient that the whole section played variations on this leading
theme, abasement and glorifying, in accordance with the sublime plan
of Yahweh."
To realize the absence of vicariousness in Second Isaiah, one need
but read carefully CUTHBERT LATTEY, "Vicarious Solidarity in the
Old Testament" (Vetus Testamentum, I [1951], 267-274), where the
statement is made (p. 272), "From the scapegoat I turn naturally to
Isa. liii, which hardly calls for much expostion, being such a clear case
 CHAPTER THREE 53

of vicarious solidarity... "; or SAMUEL H. HOOKE on "The Theory

and Practice of Substitution" (Vetus Testamentum, 2 [1959], 2-17).
There is, actually, nothing there to connect the Mesopotamian data
adduced, or the biblical scapegoat (Azazel), with our chapter 53. On
the scapegoat, note THEODOR H. GASTER'S statement (s. "Azazel,"
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. I, p. 26), " .. .in view of the
very fact that sin and impurity are unloaded upon them [viz. the
scapegoats], they can be (and are) used only as vehicles of elimination,
but not of propitiation."

The crucial passages in our chapter are verses 4-6:

(4) Surely he has borne our sickness
And carried our pains;
Yet we thought him stricken,
Smitten, and affiicted by God.
(5) But he was wounded because of our transgression,
Crushed because of our iniquities;
The chastisement of our welfare (or, that made us
whole) was upon him,
And through his stripes we were healed.
(6) Like sheep we had all gone astray,
Each of us had gone his own way;
And the Lord caused to fall upon him
The guilt of us all. l )
with which compare "and he shall bear their iniqities" / '~97 ~~:"T CP;l;~)
in verse 11, and "and he bore the sins of many" /~~~ C~~1-~f?tJ ~~:"T' in
verse 12-though these clauses may be out of place; both verses seem
to have experienced conflation.
It is evident at once that neither Babylonia nor any other gentile
nation can be involved here: they had experienced no sickness and no
pain, and, as is clear from the preceding section, they were guilty of no
transgression or iniquity, and they were not going to be healed; quite

1) 53.4-6 C~~9 ~l~~N:r7&~ ~~~ ~~:"T ~l~7P l~tt (4)

:m17~~
...... :
C~:"T',~
• '0':
:"T:::l~
.....
17~ll
-
~ml~~n ~lMl~'
T : - -: : --:-

~l~l"\l;17~ ~:::l"T~ ~l17~~~ "h~

h" -:.. T ... : •• T
T:
~~m: (5)
:.

:~l'-~~'l ;m~n~~ '~'17 m~;'1li ,o~~

IT T: • T", -: - T T •• : -

~l~~~ ;:::li:r7 Ili~~ ~l~~J;llN!lt~ ~l~~ (6)

:~l~~ Ti~ l"\~ ;::1 ~~;~;:r m:"T')
S4 H. M. ORLINSKY

the contrary: the prophet held out for them nothing but shame and
ignoble defeat. There is only one party who had transgressed and
sinned, who had, consequently, experienced sickness and pain, and
who would soon be healed of its wounds-and that was the people
Israel, now in exile. And if Israel is the party of the first part, then it is
only an individual person, be it the prophet himself or someone else,
who can be the party of the second part.
It is our contention that the concept of vicarious suffering and
atonement is not to be found either here or anywhere else in the Bible;
it is a concept that arose in Jewish and especially Christian circles of
post-biblical times. I know of no person in the Bible, nor has any
scholar pointed to any such, who took it upon himself, or who con-
sidered himself, or who was appointed or considered by others, to be
a vicarius for wicked people deserving of punishment. This should
hardly be surprising in the light of the covenant.!)
All scholars are in agreement, and rightly so, that the covenant lay
at the heart of biblical thought. God and Israel voluntarily entered
into a pact according to which God promised on oath to prosper
Israel if she remained faithful to him, and Israel undertook to worship
Him alone in return for His exclusive protection. This altogether legal
contract, then, assured both the obedient and the rebellious, both the

1) The origins of the biblical concept of covenant have in recent years been
considerably discussed, perhaps not always critically enough. It has sometimes
been overlooked that the ancient Near Eastern concepts and formulae of covenant,
while very important per se and for background, are yet not really crucial for the
correct understanding of how the prophets-half a millennium and more subse-
quent to, e.g., the j10ruit of the Hittites-structured this cornerstone of their
faith; the prophets must be permitted to speak for themselves rather than in terms
of the extra-biblical data that derive from cultures with which they had no direct,
or only the most indirect association. Out of an already large and rapidly growing
literature on covenant, one may cite GEORGE E. MENDENHALL, "Covenant Forms
in Israelite Tradition," Biblical Archaeologist, 17 (1954), 50-76; DENNIS J. Mc-
CARTHY, Treary and Covenant: Study in Form in the Ancient Oriental Documents and
in the Old Testament (= Analecta Biblica, 21, 1963) and the review by ERHARD
GERSTENBERGER in Journal of Biblical Literature, 83 (1964), 198 f.; F. CHARLES
FENS HAM, for example his articles on "The Treaty between Israel and the Gibeon-
ites," Biblical Archaeologist, 27 (1964), 96-100 (with references there to his dis-
cussions in 1963 in Vetus Testamentum and Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissen-
schaft) and "Did a Treaty between the Israelites and the Kenites Exist?" Bulletin
of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 175 (Oct. 1964), 51-54; DELBERT R.
HILLERS, Treary Curses and the Old Testament Prophets (Biblica et Orientalia, N. 16;
1964), along with the acute review by P. WERNBERG-M0LLER in Journal of Semitic
Studies, 10 (1965), 281-3; E. GERSTENBERGER, "Covenant and Commandment,"
Journal of Biblical Literature, 84 (1965), 38-51; and GENE M. TUCKER, "Covenant
Forms and Contract Forms," Vetus Testamentum, 15 (1965),486-503.
 CHAPTER THREE 55

guiltless and the wicked, their proper due. Nothing could be farther
from this basic concept of quid pro quo, or from the spirit and letter of
biblical law, or from the teachings of the prophets, than that the just
and faithful should suffer vicariously for the unjust and faithless; that
would have been the greatest injustice of all, nothing short of blas-
phemy, that the lawless be spared their punishment at the expense of
the law-abiding. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible did anyone preach a
doctrine-which would have superseded the covenant!-which
allowed the sacrifice of the innocent in place of and as an acceptable
substitution for the guilty.
Thus the prophet Ezekiel, immediately before Second Isaiah,
observed (14.14, 20) that if the three models of righteousness, Noah,
Daniel, and Job, were dwelling in wicked Jerusalem, they themselves
would escape harm in the catastrophic destruction of the city, but the
inhabitants of the city, transgressors of the Lord's commandments,
would suffer the full punishment due them. It would have occurred
to no one in the Bible that such blameless persons as Noah, Daniel,
and Job bear vicariously the suffering and punishment due to the
wicked populace of the Holy City.
Even in the well-known story in Genesis 18, where Abraham
bargains with God in the matter of the impending destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, there is not to be found the slightest hint of
vicariousness. Abraham asks God whether He would insist on de-
stroying these wicked cities if some innocent men (.faddiqim) were
found dwelling in their midst, be they fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, or
even ten in number. God replies that He would spare the guilty for the
sake of the innocent; but in no case .is there any question of a .raddiq
being a vicarius for the wicked (rasha<).
Or, finally, in Exodus 32, when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai
to behold Israel rejoicing in the golden calf. For this idolatrous act,
God wanted to destroy His people Israel. According to vv. 9-10 God
said to Moses, "I see that this is a stiffnecked people. Now let Me be,
that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy
them, and make of you a great nation." But Moses dissuades God from
such drastic action (vv. 11-14), reminding Him of what the Egyptians
would say and of the oath that He swore to the patriarchs. In another
version of this same event, vv. 30 ff., Moses said to God, "Alas, this
people is guilty of a great sin ... And yet, if you would only forgive
their sin! If not, erase me from the record which You have written!"
But the Lord said to Moses, "He who has sinned against Me, him
56 H. M. ORLINSKY

only will I erase from My record ... " Here, too, then, there is no
hint of anything vicarious being sought or offered by either party.
Turning back now to our passage in Isaiah 53, it will probably come
as an anticlimax to learn that in point of fact the text has nothing to
say in the first place about vicariousness; this was only read back into
the text many centuries after Second Isaiah's time. All that our text
says is that the individual person, whoever he was, suffered on account
of Israel's transgressions. Let us try to comprehend this statement in
historical perspective.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, whoever came in the name of God
to the representatives of the people to rebuke them for breaking faith
with God-and for what other reason did a spokesman for God make
public appearance ?-automatically suffered because of the nature of
his mission. No prophet ever appeared in order to tell Israel and her
leaders that they were just and upright in the eyes of God. On the
contrary: it was when they had to be rebuked and condemned, and be
made to repent and return to God, that a prophet appeared on the
public scene. And because of their "uncompromising vehemence, the
prophets continually risked and sometimes suffered abuse and even
death at the hands of those they attacked ... Elijah had to flee for his
life because of his vehement denunciations of Ahab and J ezebel.
Micaiah was hit on the jaw and thrown into prison... Amos the Ju-
dean risked life and limb ... at Bethel, and he minced no words in
telling the royal house and its supporters what lay in store for them as
retribution for their rebellion against the Lord. Because he bitterly
denounced the domestic and foreign policy of his government,
Jeremiah's life was threatened, he was beaten, he was put in stocks,
and he was thrown into a dungeon, so that he was constrained to cry
out (11.19), 'and I was like a docile lamb that is led to the slaughter' ...
Ezekiel was told by God, 'And you, son of man, be not afraid of them
[namely, your fellow Judean exiles in Babylonia], neither be afraid of
their words, though briers and thorns be with you and you dwell
among scorpions' ... Uriah the prophet was killed by King Jehoi-
akim ... and Zechariah was stoned to death (II Chron. 24.20-21)." 1)

1) This quotation derives from the section "The Fate of the Prophets and their
Teachings" (in chap. VII: "The Hebraic Spirit: The Prophetic Movement and
Social Justice") in my Ancient Israel, pp. 156-7. As to Zechariah, see S. H. BLANK,
"The Death of Zechariah in Rabbinic Literature" (Hebrew Union College Annual,
12-13 [1937-38], 327-346), where three different Zechariahs, including the prophet,
are involved.
It should be noted here that insufficient attention has been paid to the clear
 CHAPTER THREE 57

Everyone of these spokesmen of God suffered because of the nature

of their calling; it was their occupational hazard. 1) None of them had
committed any sin for which they were suffering, for which they were
experiencing punishment. It was simply that, innocent as they them-
selves were of any transgression against the Lord, their extremely
unpopular occupation and mission as God's spokesman necessarily
brought into their wake suffering, and abuse, and jail, and even death.
In this respect, the personage of Isaiah 53 was no more a sufferer than
so many of those who preceded or followed him as spokesman of God.
Read straightforwardly, then, all that the pertinent verses in our
chapter actually assert is that the person in question bore the griefs
and carried the sorrows of the people, having been wounded for their
transgressions and bruised for their iniquities. Like all spokesmen and
prophets of God, from first to last, this person too suffered on account
of and along with the people at large, the latter directly because of
their transgressions and the former, though not guilty of transgress-
ion, because of his unpopular mission. And when the people were
made whole again, when their wounds were healed, it was only be-
cause the prophet had come and suffered to bring them God's message
of rebuke and repentance. That, and that alone, is the meaning of such
a statement as (vv. 5-6) "The chastisement of our welfare (or, that
made us whole) was upon him, And through his stripes we were
healed ... And the Lord caused to fall upon him the guilt of us all."
It may be noted, further, that if the author of these verses had in-
tended here something of vicariousness, he would probably have
employed not (~l'N;¥)~ (~~:rl? ~l'~~~)1;) ('7i'11? ~~i1') but :1"':1 (the bet
of exchange). Similarly, in Lamentations 4.13, where nothing vicar-

distinction between vicariousness and atonement, or even martyrdom. Thus

"vicariousness" is treated together with and subsumed under "Atonement" in
Jewish Encyclopedia (vol. II, pp. 275-284; article by K. KOHLER) and in Interpreter's
Dictionary of the Bible (vol. I, pp. 309-313; article by C. L. MITTON-most in-
adequate for the Old Testament)- and quite confused with it. Or cf. "Suffering
and Evil" (pp. 450-453; article by O. A. PIPER), where, again, it is simply assumed
(§ 2a) that "the Servant of God has taken vicariously upon himself the punishment
of his nation (Isa. 53: 2-12)." In general, it is most unfortunate that so many
of the "theological" articles in the Interpreter's Dictionary involving the Old
Testament were written by scholars who are specialists only in the New Testament.
1) This may well be one of the reasons for the virtually stereotyped manner in
which one called by God to be His spokesman reacts to the summons, viz., he is
hesitant to accept the calling and may even reject it. One thinks, e.g., of Moses,
Elijah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jonah. But the matter requires further study,
58 H. M. ORLINSKY

ious is involved, it is, again, the mem that is employed: (lj'~'~~ l"lN~IJ)~
••. Y~m:i) 111iV" ,'It was because of (the sins of her prophets, the iniqui-
ties of her prophets ...)." And as it stands, the mem in (i~? :p~~ '7p~ :p~~)~
in our verse 8, usually rendered "because of (the transgressions of my
people he was stricken)," is likewise causal. So that the significance of
the single instance of bet in our section, viz., (:~l~-~Ffi~ il1'~Q)~(~) ,
can hardly be made to prove anything for vicariousness. But the ar-
gument goes beyond this: How could our author be talking of vicar-
iousness, that is, how could he be asserting that sinful Israel would
be spared punishment, when Israel had alrealy experienced that
punishment-in the form of destruction at home and two generations
of captivity abroad-and had thereby fully expiated her sinfulness
(40.1-2)?
ALFRED GUILLAUME'S discussion of "The Servant Poems in the
Deutero-Isaiah" (Theology, 11 [1925], 254-263, 309-319; 12 [1926],
2-10, 63-72), is typical of the gratuitous assumptions and confusion
that characterize so much of the scholarship on our problem. He
writes (p. 5), "the difference between the sufferings of the nation and
the sufferings of the Servant is fundamental. The nation suffered be-
cause of its disobedience to Jehovah: the Servant because of his obe-
dience. All his countrymen had wandered from the path of obedience
like silly sheep, and Jehovah brought down upon the Servant the
guilt of them all. Through these verses the emphasis and antithesis of
the we and the he are everywhere marked, so that the sense is 'we, not
he, wandered from the right way, and he, not we, bore the guilt.'
No explanation of this vicarious atonement is offered by the writer
except that it was the pleasure or will of God to save Israel and the
world in this way... The Servant's suffering was voluntary: he could
have escaped it by disobedience to God and refusal to deliver his
message. But he chose to suffer without protesting. Like a lamb borne
to the slaughter: and like a sheep before her shearers." Having noted
correctly that "we, not he, wandered from the right way," it is a pity
that GUILLAUME followed with the utterly incorrect assertion, "and
he, not we, bore the guilt": what was Israel doing in exile, its sover-
eignty destroyed, its land devastated, its Temple defiled, its population
enslaved, if not bearing the guilt? And where is the evidence that "the
world," as distinct from Israel, was to be saved? And as for the ob-
servation that "No explanation of this vicarious atonement is offered
.by the (biblical) writer"-why should an explanation be expected
 CHAPTER THREE 59

of something that did not exist in the mind of that writer?

It is interesting how LEROY WATERMAN'S article on "The Martyred
Servant Motif of Is. 53" Uournal of Biblical Literature, 56 [1937], 27-34)
has been ignored; ROWLEY'S very detailed survey has overlooked it,
and NORTH makes no reference to it at all, though he lists it in the
bibliography. WATERMAN wrote, rather bluntly (p. 28), "The Christian
tradition seized upon the factor of vicariousness and seeing only Christ
in the servant figure lifted it bodily out of its context and gave to the
language unwarranted implications that cling to it to this day." And
after discussing verses 4-5 he concludes (p. 29) that "The element of
actual vicariousness thus disappears from the verse and the context"-
this despite the fact that WATERMAN himself argues in favor of an
"ideal servant" and "a world service that transcends nationalism ... "
(p.32).
The fundamental fact should not be lost sight of, that neither in
this chapter nor elsewhere in the Bible do the sinful get off scot-free,
at the expense, as it were, of the prophets or of anyone else. Quite
the contrary: the people whom the prophet was addressing had ex-
perienced the greatest catastrophe in their history. The central element
in the phenomenon of vicariousness, that the wicked go upunished, is
lacking altogether here.
D
THE "SUFFERING SERVANT" IN
ISAIAH 53-A THEOLOGICAL AND SCHOLARLY FICTION
With the recognition that no inkling of vicarious suffering obtains
in Isaiah 53, the concept "Suffering Servant" will readily emerge for
what it really is, an equally post-biblical phenomenon.
Our chapter is full of hyperbole, not least in precisely the passages
that deal with suffering. Verses 7-9 read: 1)
(7) He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
But he opened not his mouth;
1) Following more or less the Revised Standard Version. But nearly each verse
has its difficulties, as may be seen readily, e.g., in KONIG, KISSANE, NORTH,
SNAITH, LINDBLOM, G. BEER ("Die Gedichte vom Knechte Jahwes in Jes 40-55.
Ein textkritischer und metrischer Wiederherstellungsversuch," in WOLF BAUDIS-
SIN Festschrift, ed. WILHELM FRANKENBERG-FRIEDRICH KUCHLER [Giessen, 1918],
29-46); or cf. The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters, ed.
ADOLPHE NEUBAUER-S. R. DRIVER, 2 vols. (Oxford and London, 1876-77). All
too many of the "text-critical" studies of this chapter are vitiated by prior theolo-
gical views and superficial analysis.
60 H. M. ORLINSKY

Like a lamb led to the slaughter

And like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers .. .
(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away .. .
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
Stricken for the transgression of my people.
(9) He made his grave with the wicked,
And his tomb 1) with the rich ... 2)

The well known expression "Like a lamb led to the slaughter"

(~~~' n~\?~ ;,~~), as everyone has recognized, reminds one at once-in
all probability it actually derives from-Jeremiah's plaint (11.19),
"and I was like a docile lamb led to the slaughter" (I']~~~ iD~:?,~ '~~)
lJi?i;'~ ~~~,). No one has ever accused Jeremiah of being docile as a
lamb, of accepting his suffering serenely; on the contrary, he was one
of the most vigorous spokesmen of God in the entire Bible, full of
fire and brimstone, complaint and vengeance (cf., e.g., verse 20
immediately following). As for the (universally assumed) literalness
of "Like a lamb led to the slaughter," note in Isaiah the immediately
following-non-fatal-parallel, "And like a sheep that is dumb before
its shearers," and the expression in verse 10, c'~; ':J''1~~ :!1'1r, mrt (dis-
cussed immediately below). The poet is merely asserting, in normal
poetic exaggeration, that God's spokesman to His people Israel bore
unflinchingly the suffering that such spokesmen frequently ex-
perienced.
By the same token, Second Isaiah's lament, "For he was cut off

1) Taking "m~:J as a form of root bmh "tomb" or the like (f/ i':rR "his grave");
so, e.g., Ibn Ezra, S. D. LUZZATTO (with reference also to LOWTI-I, MARTINI,
LOCKENMACHER, and GESENIUS; see p. 359 of the Texts in vol. I, or p. 422 of the
Translations in vol. II, in The Fifty-Third Chapter in Isaiah, etc.; cf. also Jacob ben
Reuben the Qaraite, I, p. 60 = II, p. 62), Jewish Publication Society Translation
(1917), American Translation, La Sainte Bible (1956); see most recently SAMUEL
IWRY,fBL, 76 (1957), 232. The traditional interpretation, according to which our
word derives from :J and root mwt "to die," is not easily defended.
2) 53.7-9 ,'!;)-nlJ!;l; N'~1 ;,~~~ N~;'1 iD~~ (7)
;"TTl 'ltl~ 'n'~~ ~:J~' n:J~~ ;,ilt:;)
T ... : •• : . •• T : T - ": - ": -

:"p ntl~~ N'1 ;,It~!$~

IJniiD7 '~ i'i"T-Z1~1 n~7 ~~~np~~ '~17~ (8)
:i~? :!1~~ 'I'p~ :!1~~~ C'~IJ n~~ 'I~ ':;>
"nbf "t?'~-Z1~1 i':rR C'~!f!-Z1~ ltl~) (9)
:"P.f ;,It!~ N'1 ;,~~ OItO- N' ,~
 CHAPTER THREE 61

from the land of the living" (c~~1J n~~ 'I~ ~:p), recalls at once Jere-
miah's cry (11.18-20), "(...1 did not know that it was against me that
they devised schemes, saying, 'Let us destroy the tree with its fruit),
let us cut him off from the land of the living (c~~1J n~~ ~!!)")~;), (that
his name be remembered no more).' " Of course Jeremiah lived long
enough after this outburst to be taken down to Egypt against his will.
As a matter of fact, Isaiah 53.10 tells us very plainly that the central
character of the chapter did not die in the midst of his mission; we
read: " ... he shall live to see his offspring, he shall have a long life... "
(:n~~~ ii;i1 m;,~ r~m c~"'; 1~j~~ 371j ;,~")~).1) This expression can only
mean that the person did not die, but, instead, would live a long life
on earth. (It is scarcely necessary to observe that it could not mean that
after dying and rising, he would then die again, and remain dead
forever). In Job 42.16-17, Job is said to have lived after his bitter
ordeal, "a hundred and forty years, and he lived to see (mn~) children
and children's children, four generations; and Job died in ripe old
age." Note also Gen. 50.23, "And Joseph lived to see (children of the
third generation of Ephraim... )" /(~~i1 c~ c~Ft~l!i ~~i1 c~1'?~7) r']9i~ N")~)
(:r']~i~ ~~")~-,~ ~i7~ ;'W~'?-P) '~:;>7t; and for 37~~~ ;,~")~ •• ·c~~; 1~j~~ in
53.10-11 cf. Ps. 91.16, :~PW~!U':;1 ~;,~")~, ~;,~~~~~ c~~; 1?N. Finally,
attention may be drawn to the fact that the expression c~~; 1~j~i;I

("to live a long life"; lit. "to prolong days") is characteristic of

Deuteronomy (cf. S. R. DRIVER, Introduction to the Literature of the Old
Testament, 9th ed., 1913, p. 99), where afterlife and resurrection are
unknown.
TORREY, who regards the Gentiles as speaking here about Israel,
says about our v. 9 (p. 420), "It is certain that where 'death' is spoken
of in these verses, it is either in hyperbole or else (as in the present
case) in the description of what the onlooking Gentiles expected
[all italics in original]. They did not dig his grave; they 'assigned' it,
'designated' it... They were all ready to bury him with the criminals,
as soon as the last spark of life should be gone. He was 'as good as
dead.' But of course the whole significance of the poem rests on the

1) The expression ivj,?~ C~~ C~Wtl-Cl::t ~7r.)i;I iNf"I r~o m;,~) in the first part of
the verse is both of uncertain meaning and corrupt-and this on any interpretation
of the verse as a whole; so that translators and commentators render this passage
on the basis of emendation, whether implicit or explicit. None of these translations
may be used for any theory.
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 5
62 H. M. ORLINSKY

fact that the Servant did not die, but lived to be brought to triumph.
52: 13-15 and especially 53: 12 are entirely conclusive on this point ...
[and on v. 10, "He will see his seed"] The Servant not only escapes
the death which came so near, but sees the sure promise of long life
and a blessed posterity... "
One could readily multiply such instances of hyperbole; the book
of Job, e.g., is full of it. Outside the Bible one calls radily to mind
the well know Mesopotamian composition Ludlul bel nemeqi ("1 will
praise the lord of wisdom"), where the "righteous sufferer" lives to
lament:

The grave was open still when they rifled my treasures,

While I was not yet dead, already they stopped mourning. I)

Accordingly, the expressions in 53.7-12, "Like a lamb led to the

slaughter,JAnd like a sheep that is dumb before its shearersJ ... Fot he
was cut off from the land of the livingJ ... And he made his grave with
the wicked,/And his tomb with the rich/ ... And he bared (the meaning
of :"I'~v is quite uncertain) his life (= exposed himself) to death ... "
indicate, rhetorically, nothing more than that the person in question
suffered much in the course of his mission from God to Israel, but did
not die in consequence of it; instead, he would live long after that
chore, long enough to enjoy several generations of progeny and
victory over his adversaries. And they may be right who believe that
the career of ancient Job-not in the (later) dialogue but in the very
much earlier background of the prologue-epilogue 2)-may well have
suggested this to Second Isaiah. 3)

1) THORKILD JACOBSEN, in his section on "Mesopotamia" in The Intellectual

Advanture of Ancient Man, ed. HENRI and H. A. FRANKFORT (Chicago, 1946;
appeared in 1949 as a Pelican Book, without the chapters on "The Hebrews,"
under the title Before Philosophy), pp. 212-216; or cf. ROBERT H. PFEIFFER'S
translation on pp. 434-437 of Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testa-
ment, ed. JAMES B. PRITCHARD (Princeton, 1950).
2) Cf. N. SARNA, "Epic Substratum in the Prose of Job," Jouranl of Biblical
Literature, 76 (1957), 13-25. The universal tendency to see resurrection in vv.
10-12acx. following death (vv. 8-9, 12a~), reminds one of Job 19.27-29, where the
irrevocably corrupt text is made by numerous scholars to yield resurrection, in
spite of all the other perfectly clear data to the contrary; cf. chap. III, § C, "Alleged
Concept of Afterlife," in ORLINSKY, "Studies in the Septuagint of the Book of
Job" (Hebrew Union College Annual, 32 [1961], 241-249; 19.25-27 is treated on
pp. 248 f.).
3) It should ordinarily not be necessary to add here the obvious caveat that
because Second Isaiah made use of earlier writers or ideas, this does not indicate
 CHAPTER THREE 63

It is clear that the concept "Suffering Servant," with capital "S,"

could not have derived from within our Hebrew text in biblical times.
The central figure in chapter 53-regardless of whether the term "My
servant" in 52.13 is really applicable to him or not (see § A above)-
was no more a "sufferer," in some instances he was even less, than
God's spokesmen elsewhere in the Bible. Certainly there is no evidence
that he "suffered" more than, say, Elijah, or Jeremiah, or Uriah, or
Job; and none of these ever became known, either during or after the
biblical period, as a "suffering servant."

E
SOME ALLEGED ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN PARALLELS
TO ISAIAH 53

The attempts to discover elsewhere in the ancient Near East

pertinent parallels to our problems in Isaiah 53 have been less than
successful, partly because there are none and partly because our own
biblical problems were not comprehended correctly in the first place.
For having assumed that a suffering servant and vicarious suffering
and atonement were involved in our chapter, and that the servant
accepted the suffering in meekness, humility, and uncomplaining
silence, scholarly procedure dictated a search in comparative materials
for parallels.
Unfortunately, the parallels that have been discovered scarcely
stand up as such under careful scrutiny. Thus the generalizing
statement has been made (WILLIAM F. ALBRIGHT, From the Stone Age to
Christinaity: Monotheism and the Historical Process [Baltimore, 1940],
p. 254), lacking real pertinence to the problems at hand, "Humility,
silence, and meekness became increasingly characteristic of ancient
oriental piety after the late second millennium B.C." 1) But how this
that he had any earlier worthy specifically in mind as the central personage in
chap. 53. Yet that is precisely what so many critics have proceeded to do, so that
not many biblical figures have escaped identification as the "Suffering Servant";
see, e.g., the list of candidates for this dubious role in NORTH'S "Contents"
on p. v.
1) This quotation follows immediately upon, " ... The combination of these
two concepts, vicarious suffering and purification through suffering, lies behind
Deutero-Isaiah's doctrine of salvation. The most obvious characteristic of the
Servant of Yahweh is his humility and meekness in the presence of his tormentors"
-differently, one might well ask, from Jeremiah and so many other prophets?
Indeed, this is the least obvious characteristic of Second Isaiah's 'ebed-unless one
insists on disregarding altogether not only the plain meaning of so many passages
64 H. M. ORLINSKY

sweeping statement bears upon our specific problems is not made

clear; for what can this kind of statement prove, even if only in the
matter of chronology, for the period of Second Isaiah over half a
millennium later? As for the assertion that follows immediately,
"The inscriptions of the Nee-Babylonian kings (sixth century B.C.)
often begin with the words (following the titulary), 'the meek and
humble one,' " it is well known that such inscriptions are generally
characterized from the very beginning by formulaic humility, con-
ventional meekness and politeness. These are but official formulas,
and have no pertinence for Isaiah 53 which has no association with
royal historical inscriptions; thus, no one would assume that the-
likewise only alleged-meekness and humility of Jeremiah ("But I
was like a docile lamb led to the slaughter ... ,"followed in the
very next verse by "But, 0 Lord of Hosts .. .let me see Your ven-
geance upon them ... !") derives likewise from Neo-Babylonian royal
inscriptions.
Again, attention is drawn to the fact that "The words 'I am a
humble man' appear at the commencement of an inscription of a king
of Hamath about 800 B.C." But apart from the fact that the reading
and meaning of the original are not beyond dispute,l) how can the
alleged concept in Isaiah 53 be demonstrated by finding the word for
"humble" in the dialect of another culture, region, and period?
And, finally, the statement is made, "Humility is also a char-
acteristic of the worshipper in late Egyptian and Assyrian prayers
to the gods"; however, this is usually the case in all prayers among
all peoples in all times, including the prayers in the Bible itself.

of the Hebrew text but also the characteristic and vigorous nationalism of our
prophet, in relation to both his own people and to the non-Israelite peoples.
1) Line 2 of the Zakir inscription is generally read ('ish) caneh ('anah) and
translated "(A) humble (man am I)." M. BLACK, on the other hand (Documents
from Old Testament Times, ed. D. WINTON THOMAS [1958; now a Harper Torch-
book]), pp. 242 ff. (following M. LmzBARsKI, Ephemeris fur semitische Epigraphik
[Giessen, 1909-1915], vol. III, p. 6), renders "I am a man of cAnah" (p. 248,
"cAnah seems more likely to have been a place name than an adjective"), and ob-
serves that "The name could also, however, be read as cakko (the middle letter is
uncertain) and identified with a place of this name in Phoenicia." Reproductions
of the Zakir inscription are given e.g., in H. POGNON, Inscriptions semitiques de la
Syrie, etc. (Paris, 1907), plates IX and XXXV (with the discussion of our word on
p. 159); col. 198 of ALBRIGHT'S article on "Hamath" in Encyclopaedia Miqra'it,
vol. III (1958), cols. 193-200 (with recent bibliography).
 CHAPTER THREE 65

It may also be noted that Isaiah 53 is not a prayer, and lacks a wor-
shipper. I )
In fine, there are no ancient Near Eastern parallels to our problem,
a conclusion that is not surprising in view of the fact that our problem
did not come into being in the first place until some six hundred years
after the days of Second Isaiah.
Whatever Second Isaiah's style and thought may owe to the
specifically Babylonian part of his environment, I cannot take seri-
ously the attempts to associate chapter 53, say, with the mythology
and cult of Tammuz (see the survey in ROWLEY, pp. 42 ff.). As a matter
of fact, Tammuz (or the U garitic material adduced) would never have
suggested itself in this connection had it not been for the "dying-and-
rising" element which was read into our Hebrew text in the early days
of Christianity. Neither am I impressed by the attempts to attach the
concept of "divine kingship" to our chapter; Second Isaiah's concept
of the character and role of God, amply attested by every chapter in
his Book, precludes these attempts-apart from the not insignificant
fact that the entire problem of "divine kingship" in relation to the
Hebrew Bible is still very much sub judice.
Modern scholars, all too prone to read the dying-and-rising element
in the ancient Near East and then into the Bible, may now study
EDWIN M. YAMAUCHI, "Tammuz and the Bible" Uournal oj Biblical
Literature, 84 [1965], 283-290); cf., e.g., pp. 289 f., " ... the resurrection
of Tammuz was based, in the words of (SAMUEL N.) KRAMER, 'on
nothing but inference and surmise, guess and conjecture' ... More-
over, the resurrection of Inanna-Ishtar offers a contrast and not a
comparison... Inanna, instead of rescuing Tammuz from hell, sent
him there." And A. F. RAINEY, in one of his several stimulating ar-
ticles on aspects of "The Kingdom of Ugarit" (Biblical Archaeologist,
28 [1965], 102-125), has noted (p. 121) that "Baal is admittedly a dying
and rising fertility deity, but his cycle of victories and defeats in the
struggle with Mot (Death) is not a seasonal affair. The agricultural
1) The theory of a "fluctuating" servant is well put by ALBRIGHT (p.
255), " ... When not only the leaders themselves, but also every pious Isra-
elite is ready to give himself as a vicarious victim for his people, then God
will restore Israel and will give it a glorious future. In this interpretation
the different aspects of the Servant of Yahweh receive due consideration. The
Servant is the people of Israel, which suffers poignantly in exile and affliction; he
is also the pious individual who atones for the sins of the many by his uncom-
plaining agony; he is finally the coming Savior of Israel. .. " But this is pa-
tently - though well meant - homiletics, not scholarship.
66 H. M. ORLINSKY

seasons of Syria and Palestine do not recognize an alternation of

fertile and infertile seasons ... " (with reference to CYRUS H. GORDON;
also to ALBRIGHT for noting the same lack of alternation in the Gezer
Calendar).
J. PHILIP HYATT, "The Sources of the Suffering Servant Idea"
Uournal of Near Eastern Studies, 3 [1944], 79-86) has taken it for granted
that the "Suffering Servant Idea" obtained in Isaiah 53 and-even if
only potentially-in the Bible proper. EDWARD J. YOUNG, Studies in
Isaiah (London, 1955), chap. 5, "The Origin of the Suffering Servant
Idea" (pp. 127-141), has criticized in some detail one of HYATT'S four
sources (the myth of the dying and rising god); but one cannot get
very far in the scholarly comprehension of the problem in the face of
such dogmatic assertions as (p. 129), " ... Who is the Servant? The
answer, we believe, is that He is the redeemer Messiah whom God
had long ago promised to His people as their Deliverer from sin. In
other words, the Servant is Jesus Christ"; and (pp. 140 f.), " ... The
righteous Servant suffering for the sins of those who are unrighteous
is a conception which could never have been conceived by the unaided
mind of man .. .If, therefore, we are to look for the sources of the
idea of the Suffering Servant, we shall find them not in the religions of
antiquity, but in a special revelation from God ... "
And so one can but express the fullest sympathy with G. ERNEST
WRIGHT'S vigorous rejection of the attempts by those scholars (e.g.,
IVAN ENGNELL, "The Ebed Yahweh Songs and the Suffering Messiah
in 'Deutero-Isaiah,' " in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 31 [1948],
54-93) to interpret Isaiah 53 in the light of Mesopotamian royal ritual;
he asserts, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital (= Studies in
Biblical Theology, No.8, 1952), p. 80, n. 1, " ... For my part, I can only
say that the evidence adduced for such an interpretation of the
suffering servant is so meagre, tenuous and strained that the theory is
most difficult to accept ... "
F
THE CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
"SUFFERING SERVANT" AND "SERVANT OF THE LORD"
AS TECHNICAL TERMS
It is, naturally, outside the scope of this study to determine pre-
cisely when and under what circumstances Jesus came to be associated
with the personage in Isaiah 53; I say "naturally," because the present-
 CHAPTER THREE 67

day specialist in Old Testament, no matter how learned and gifted he

may be, can hardly lay claim to the competence of the specialist in
New Testament. Yet by the same token the former is not absolved of
acquainting himself with the work of the latter-and the latter, no
less, with that of the former-when a problem such as ours is in-
volved. Unfortunately, Old Testament scholarship since the days of
Duhm has gotten so deeply in the rut of taking it for granted that such
concepts as "Servant of the Lord" and "Suffering Servant" were
technical terms already in Second Isaiah and the Hebrew Bible that it
did not think of investigating them in their New Testament setting.
(Note the same attitude on the part of Old Testament scholars to the
concept of vicarious suffering, chapter III, § C above.)
ROWLEY has noted (The Servant of the Lord, etc., p. 55, n. 1) that some
scholars hold "that the ascription to Jesus of an interpretation of His
mission in terms of the Servant is an unhistorical creation of the post-
resurrection church." Thus F. J. FOAKES JACKSON-KIRSOPP LAKE,
The Beginnings of Christianity, Part I: The Acts of the Apostles, vol. r
(1920), in their chapter (IV) on "Christology" (§ III, Primitive
Christianity), have asserted (p. 385)-and this in spite of the fact that
they permitted themselves to be misled by their Old Testament
colleagues into believing that "In the parts of the Old Testament
which develop this relation of suffering with service considerable
importance attaches to the word 'Servant of the Lord' (7tot'Lc; XUpLOU) •••
and the consciousness of this connexion reached its highest literary
expression in the Psalter and in the second part ofIsaiah" (pp. 384-5)-
"In none of these, however, do the writers appear to have had in mind
any prophetic description of a great Sufferer and certainly had no idea
of relating their descriptions of suffering to the Davidic Messiah or to
the Son of Man in the Apocalypses"; or cf. p. 386, "In Mark and in
Q there are no clear signs of any identification of Jesus with the
sufferer of Isaiah liii. .. " It may be observed here, too, that JACKSON-
LAKE did not note that it is not with the "Servant of the Lord" but
with the "Suffering Servant" that Jesus first came to be associated.
B. W. BACON, "New and Old in Jesus' Relation to John" Uournalof
Biblical Literature, 48 [1929], 40-81; part of a symposium on Primitive
Christianity and Judaism), p. 61, put it this way, " ... Nevertheless the
earliest intimations are all opposed to Jesus' application of the figure
to himself. Not the 'Servant' but 'the Son of Man' is Jesus 'self-desig-
nation .. uniformly the identification of him with the Isaian suffering
Servant is represented as a post-resurrection discovery... " And
68 H. M. ORLINSKY

C. T. CRAIG begins his survey discussion of "The Identification of

Jesus with the Suffering Servant" Uourna! of Religion, 24 [1944],
240-245), as follows: "From countless pulpits, congregations are told
that Jesus found the clue to his ministry in the fulfilment of the Suf-
fering Servant prophecies of the Book of Isaiah. Indeed, many modern
scholars have affirmed the same belief... On the other hand, it seems
to me that at few points has wishful thinking dominated the judgment
of scholars more than in the consideration of this issue... "
The concept "Servant of the Lord," no more than any of the so-
called Ebed-YHWH sections, had no special significance for anyone
until after the career of Jesus had come to an end; the attempts to
find this significance in an earlier period flounder on the simple fact
that mere reference to passages in Second Isaiah, even to chapters
52-53, do not yet demonstrate technical terms and significant con-
cepts such as "Servant of the Lord" and "Suffering Servant". This fact
may be determined from a careful analysis of the references compiled,
e.g., in NORTH (pp. 5-27); ROWLEY, chap. I (pp. 3 ff.); ZIMMERLI-
JEREMIAS, chaps. III ("IIei!:c;; 0eo;:; [read "The term 'Servant of the
Lord'''] in Late Judaism in the Period after the LXX") andIV("II~Lc;;
0eo;:; in the New Testament"), respectively 43-78 and 79-104. In the
last-named, it is interesting to note how the absence of either all
reference or any specific reference to Isa. 53 is frequently turned into
proof that it is precisely Isa. 53 that was uppermost in the mind of
those who failed to cite from it or gave it no special prominence. Thus,
it is conceded that "In the N.T. Jesus receives the title II~LC;; 0eo;:;
strikingly seldom... " (p. 80), and that "There are strikingly few N.T.
passages where in specific quotation a word relating to the servant of
Deut. Isa. is applied to Jesus ... " (p. 88); to the question "Can Jesus
have known himself to be the servant of God?" Jeremias gives im-
mediate reply, "The gospels say so ... " (p. 98); " ... the silence of
Jesus before his judges (Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod) ... " (p. 99) in
reference to his role as Deutero-Isaiah's Ebed- YHWH-this and other
serious related problems are solved with one stroke by the gratuitous
assumption, and in the face of reasonable analysis of the data available
(or altogether absent), that " ... Jesus only allowed himself to be
known as the servant in his esoteric and not in his public preaching.
Only to his disciples did he unveil the mystery that he viewed the
fulfilment of Isa. 53 as his God-appointed task ... " (p. 104). There is
far more of eisegesis than exegesis to be found here; thus when JERE-
MIAS asserts, "The gospels say so," one has but to examine carefully
 CHAPTER THREE 69

each passage quoted from the gospels along with each alleged source
in Isa. 53 and it will be apparent at once that JEREMIAS has simply
pulled out individual and isolated words or common expressions-
virtually never, incidentally, from the Septuagint text of Isa. 53!-
and made these justify his dogmatic assertion, "The gospels say so."
Indeed, the gospels do not say so; it is only JEREMIAS who says that they
say so. JEREMIAS' treatment of this all-important subject is an unjusti-
fiable retrogression from the scholarly treatment give it, e.g., by
FOAKES JACKSON-LAKE three and a half decades earlier.
JEREMIAS' presentation appears particularly inadequate and mislead-
ing in the light, e.g., of HENRY CADBURY'S multum in parvo Note on
"The Titles of Jesus in Acts" in vol. V of FOAKES JACKSON-LAKE,
Beginnings of Christianity (1933; pp. 354-375), especially § 9 on 0 1tcx.~c;
(364-370). There he noted (p. 366), inter alia, "The use of 1tcx.~c; with
Jesus is generally regarded as a definite reference to the so-called
Suffering Servant of parts of Isaiah, notably Isaiah liii. It may be an
act of temerity to question this origin... Conversely the influence of
the Isaiah passages on early Christianity is fortified by references to
these passages in Acts, with the further assumption that because they
are liturgical their concepts are early. Such a connexion was questioned
in Vol. 1. p. 391, but in view of its all but general acceptance it is
worth while to indicate how little basis it has to rest on.
"The use of Isaiah's interpretation is exceedingly scanty. Modern
expositors, hard put to it to find predictions of Christ's death.in the
Old Testament, seize upon Isaiah liii as the proof text. But there is
little evidence that it played so central a role. Paul and Luke refer
frequently in a general way to the Scriptural expectation of Christ's
passion, but Paul never uses Isaiah's words and Luke but once (Acts
viii.32 f.).
"The abundance of the vicarious clauses in Isaiah liii. also attracts
modern commentators with their preconceived notion of what
primitive Christology must have been like. Luke, however, as I have
pointed out elsewhere [The Making of Luke-Acts, p. 280, and note], not
only omits 'vicarious' phrases found in Mark, but the one time that he
does quote Isaiah liii almost unbelievably escapes all the vicarious
phrases with which the passage abounds ... " 1)
Following on a fine critique of ADOLF VON HARNACK's use of words

1) MORNA HOOKER (p. 4) quotes this last sentence. On my view, there is nothing
of vicariousness in Isaiah in the first place, and so there was no reason for Luke
to make use of this non-existent concept.
70 H. M. ORLINSKY

and passages in the Old and New Testament in his "Die Bezeichnung
Jesu als 'Knecht Gottes' und ihre Geschichte in der alten Kirche"
(pp. 212-238 in the Sitzungsberichte of 1926 of the Berlin Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse); with references
also, e.g., to L. L. CARPENTER and C. C. TORREY), CADBURY con-
cludes this Note with the statement (pp. 369-370), "In their atomistic
use of Scripture the early Christians were very different from the
modern theologian who, gathering together the four 'servant pas-
sages' of Isaiah, derives from them a complete concept, treating them
as a whole, and then assumes that this Christological concept underlies
the passages mentioned, and even such passages as have no more echo
of Isaiah than the simple 7tOCr;~."
(The sort of eisegesis practiced by most scholars in this area of
research is well brought out by ROBERT P. CASEY'S Note on M&p't"U~, on
pp. 30-37 of the same vol. V of Beginnings of Christianity: "In studying
the history of the word fL&p"t"u~, scholars have been principally in-
terested in explaining how, in early Christian documents, it gradually
lost its usual sense of a witness [Hebrew j~] at a trial and came to
mean one who testified to the truth of Christianity by sacrificing his
life ... the transition from 'witness' to 'martyr' ... " It is really only
after the idea of Jesus' resurrection began to develop, when his
death came to be associated with special significance, that "the
passion and resurrection of the Messiah and the universal opportunity
for repentance" became the subject of the testimony of the fL&p"t"UpE~.
But we may not pursue here any further the fascinating and all-im-
portant subject of eisegesis at large).
It is above all in MORNA D. HOOKER'S remarkable book onJesus and
the Servant: The Influence oj the Servant Concept oj Deutero-Isaiahin the
New Testament (London, S.P.c.K., 1959) that the flagrant eisegesis
that has so long usurped all authority and methodology in the scholar-
ly study of our subject has been exposed. The book would appear to
have been generally unread or slighted, perhaps even suppressed;
reference to it is rather meager (e.g., it is unmentioned among the
extremely full bibliographical data offered in the new English version
by PETER R. ACKROYD of EISSFELDT'S The Old Testament: An In-
troduction [HARPER & Row, 1965]).
As in the case of FOAKES JACKSON-LAKE, CADBURY, and others (e.g.,
WILHELM BOUSSET and RUDOLF BULTMANN, referred to on pp. 4-5 of
her book), MORNA HOOKER'S argument would have been fortified
many times over had she realized fully that what Old Testament
 CHAPTER THREE 71

scholarship had to say about Second Isaiah and Isaiah 53 and the
Hebrew Bible generally about Servant of the Lord, Suffering Servant,
Vicarious Suffering and Atonement, and the like, was to be taken
with no fewer grains of salt than were the results of New Testament
scholarship in its domain. Nervertheless, her reasoning and conr
clusions are of the fullest significance. The following excerpts are in-
tended chiefly to present her viewpoint and to send the sincere student
of the subject scurrying to the book itself.
Following on chapters on "General Survey of Recent Work on the
Problem" (I, pp. 1-24), "The Servant Passages: their Meaning and
Background" (II, 25-52), and "Jewish Interpretation of the Servant"
(III, 53-61), Miss HOOKER deals in chapter IV with "The Servant in the
Synoptic Gospels" (pp. 62-102; the notes are on pp. 181-191) and
arrives at the conclusion that "There is ... very little in the Synoptics
to support the traditional view that Jesus identified his mission with
that of the Servant of the Songs ... " (p. 102). Her analysis of "The
Servant in the Early Church" (V, 103-133) leads her to the conclusion
that "In these early extra-canonical documents there is nothing to
suggest that the identification of Jesus with the Servant was widely
known or used in the primitive Church. Only in one passage in the
Epistle of Barnabas is the fifty-third chapter ofIsaiah applied to Jesus,
through whose sufferings Christians receive the forgiveness of their
sins. Elsewhere the passage is taken, either merely as a prophecy of the
fact of his sufferings, or as the description of the one whose example
of humility Christians are to exhorted to follow.
"We have now examined the literature of the early Church up to the
middle of the second century A.D., a period sufficiently long to show
whether or not the failure of the New Testament writers to make
much use ofIsa. 53 was accidental; the paucity of positive evidence in
the extra-canonical material supports the conclusion to which the
evidence of the New Testament has already led us, that the early
Church did not attach any great significance to the Servant passages,
or regard them as the key to their understanding of the Atonement"
(p. 133).
The chapter (VI, 134-146) on "The Concept of Suffering" ends with
this statement, "Finally, any direct equation of Son of Man and
Messiah makes nonsense of the evidence of the gospels, which shows
clearly that neither the disciples of Jesus, nor the Jews in general,
understood the title 'Son of Man' as a Messianic term."
In her final chapter (VII, 147-163), "The Servant Concept in the
72 H. M. ORLINSKY

Thought of Jesus and the Early Church," Miss HOOKER concludes

inter alia: "The account of the beliefs of the early Christians which is
given in the Acts of the Apostles does not suggest that the primitive
community ever thought of Jesus as 'the Servant' of Deutero-Isaiah.
Nor is there any evidence that the author of the book himself made
such an identification. We found no reason for linking either the title
'7tIX~<;' or the term '~LXIXW<;' with Deutero-Isaiah in particular, nor for
understanding the references to the prophets as pointing only to Isa.
50 and 53. The use which is made of Isa. 49.6 and of 42.6 f. in Acts
13 and 26 shows clearly that no identification of Jesus with any
'Servant figure' is intended; the concepts have been found to be
relevant to both Jesus and Paul.
"These facts are the more significant, since in Acts 8 we find a
quotation from Isa. 53 actually applied to the sufferings and death of
Christ. While it is evident from the context, however, that Philip
interpreted the passage as a description of the Passion of his Lord,
this by no means implies that he must have in mind an equation of the
nature: Jesus = the Servant. For it must be stressed once again that
the words which are quoted speak only of the fact of the sufferings
and death of the Servant, and do not mention their significance. These
facts, however, are precisely those features which were alreatfy present
in the primitive kerygma, and which need no passage from the Old Testament
to suggest them. The significance of this quotation, therefore, must lie,
not in any interpretation of the meaning of Christ's death, but in the
fact that it is a foreshadowing of the events of the Passion: in other
words, Isa. 53 is used here in precisely the same way as in Luke 22.37,
and with the same motive as lies behind the introduction by both
Matthew and Luke of quotations from Deutero-Isaiah in other con-
texts. The passage is used, not as a theological dogma, but as a
'proof-text' from the Old Testament that these things could-and
did-happen to the Messiah.
" ... Paul apparently makes no use whatever of the 'Servant figure',
although he quotes twice from the fourth Song. In view of the com-
plete lack of evidence for any identification of Jesus with the Servant
in the tradition underlying either the gospels or Acts, it is impossible
to accept the view that certain words which Paul uses are echoes of
such a belief in the primitive community. Certainly if Paul himself had
thought of Jesus as 'Servant' he would have made it plain. The absence
of this concept from his thought is the more significant, in view of his
continual emphasis upon the atoning value of the death of Christ.
 CHAPTER THREE 73

"In St. John's gospel. .. There is no connection with the concept

of vicarious atonement, as expressed in Deutero-Isaiah.. (pp. 150 ff.;
cf. pp. 105 f.).
"How was it, then, that apparently neither Jesus nor his disciples
made use of an idea [the Servant idea] which to us seems so obvious?
Why did both Jesus, who spoke of the necessity of his death, and the
early Church, which grapples with the perplexing problem of his
Passion, and actually quoted the fourth Servant Song in their apolo-
getic, fail to identify him with the Servant?
"The solution to this problem would seem to lie in the fact that
modern scholarship, in over-estimating the importance of the Servant
concept for Jesus and the early Church, has also inevitably exaggerated
the part played by the same concept in contemporary Judaism.
Consequently, too much emphasis has been placed, first upon the
figure of the Servant himself, and secondly upon his experience of
suffering" (p. 155).
Miss HOOKER has hit the nail on the head. But she could have gone
even further and stated more sweepingly: neither the Old Testament-
including especially Second Isaiah and its chapter 53-nor the Judaism
of the intertestamental period knew anything of the concepts of
Servant of the Lord, Suffering Servant, and Vicarious Suffering and
Atonement as they came to be developed by the followers of Jesus
some time after his death.
FOAKES JACKSON-LAKE, pp. 390 if., have some pertinent remarks to
make on Acts 8 (the full text may be seen below, in chapter IV § D
end). Thus they wrote (p. 391) " .. .it is tempting to suggest that the
interpretation of Isaiah liii. as a prophecy of Jesus was first introduced
by Hellenistic Christians, for there is no positive evidence of its
existence in sources which certainly represent the thought of the
first disciples in Jerusalem but it was clearly part of the teaching of
Philip." Previously (pp. 384 ff.) they had noted (p. 390), "There is no
more trace of a Christian interpretation of the 'Servant' in Isaiah
regarded as a sufferer, than there is in Mark or Q. The situation is
markedly different in Luke and Acts ... " And even "In Acts the
Passion of Jesus is identified with the suffering of the Servant, but
nowhere is described as giving salvation to men ... " (p. 391).
It is not difficult to surmise that if these two learned editors of
The Beginnings oj Christianiry-not to mention any of the other New
Testament specialists referred to above-had been aware that none of
Servant of the Lord, Suffering Servant, or Vicarious Suffering and
74 H. M. ORLINSKY

Atonement was known to biblical or intertestamental Judaism, they

would have been far more positive in explaining these concepts and
their association with Jesus as from specifically pagan sources, as the
product of a non-biblical milieu in the Greco-Roman world. Thus it
was also from a non-biblical Hellenistic milieu that the idea of virgin
birth emanated, to be associated with Jesus and then read back into
both the Hebrew word (almah and its Septuagint rendering 7tlXp6evoc;;
in Isaiah 7.14 so that the Hebrew word was made to mean here-con-
trary to all pertinent data-"virgin" instead of "young woman,"
and the Greek word was made to mean-again incorrectly-ex-
clusively "virgin."
Interestingly, in pre-New Testament times it is yaskil (52.13),
not (ebed, that is seized upon for purpose of identification and inter-
pretation. Thus it has long been recognized that the maskilim in
Daniel (11.33, 35; 12.3, 10) derive from our own yaskil; but nothing
vicarious is involved here, nor any such concept as a Suffering Servant
of the Lord. 1 ) And this is true likewise of the Dead Sea Scroll material,
into which some scholars have tried, beyond the call of scientific duty,
to read their own notions of Isaiah 52-53 and Jesus as the fulfillment
of them (cf., e.g., A. DUPONT-SOMMER, The Essene Writings from
Qumran [Meridian Books, 1962], chap. VIII, § 2, "The Man of Sor-
rows," pp. 364-366; this whole section is a homiletical disservice to
the Scroll material, with n. 1 on p. 366 being particularly revealing);
nothing vicarious is involved there. Indeed, it is, again, only by
wishful thinking (viz., eisegesis) that Qumran's "Righteous Teacher"
is identified with Second Isaiah's servant; cf., e.g., M. BURROWS,
More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1958), pp. 66, 316 f.,
328, 335 f.-reiterating with greater emphasis the brief statements in
his earlier volume, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1955); F. M.
CROSS, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies
(AnchorBooks,rev. ed., 1961), p. 222, n. 52. I suppose that it would
not be easy to associate the concept of vicariousness with a group
that could produce a treatise dealing with the ruthless and total war
of the righteous (children of light) against the wicked (children of
darkness).

1) Miss HOOKER (n. 1 to p. 53 and n. 4 to p. 56, respectively on pp. 177 and 178)
takes WILLIAM H. BROWNLEE severely to task for the wholly uncritical manner in
which he seeks and finds evidence for the Servant concept in Daniel and in the
Dead Sea Scrolls; she finds that his "sweeping statement is based upon the flim-
siest of evidence" and is "unconvincing."
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE IDENTITY OF THE "SERVANT" IN SECOND ISAIAH

We have seen that nothing especially significant was attached in

biblical times to the so-called 'ebed sections in Second Isaiah; were it
not for the theological needs of early Christianity that brought
emphasis for the first time to the concept "servant" in Isaiah 52-53,
it is altogether doubtful that scholars would subsequently have paid
special attention and granted special status to Second Isaiah's servant
passages. We shall deal here with the four generally recognized
major servant sections, though not in very great detail, in the hope
of clarifying the identity of the servant in them. For bibliography or
more detailed analysis, see, e.g., NORTH, 117 ff.; SNAITH; LINDHAGEN,
197-228; LINDBLOM, 14 ff.; ROWLEY, passim; DE BOER; ZIMMERLI-
JEREMIAS, 23-34.
A. 42.1jJ.
'W~~ :-r~~1 'i'r:t~ ;:;"-":J~J;1~ ,,:t~ it' (1)
:~'~;' t:I~;~7 ~'f~1? "7W 'r:t~, 'l;lm
:;~;p r~n~ ~'I?~~-~'~, ~,~ ~.~, p~~~ ~~ (2)
:-r~~~; ~~ :-rV~ :-r1;l~!;)~ ,;:;,.~~ ~~ r~:!q :-r~R. (3)
r~'~ ~~} m;r:;>~ ~~ (4) :~~~I? ~,~;, l'1~~?
:~~!J~; t:I'~~ ;l'1?;l'17~ ~Pr~1? ntt~ t:I'~-i~
t:I:-r'~;l' t:I,~!tJ:-r ~,;:;,. m:-r' ~~:-r ,~~-:-r:b (5)
..... : '-T-" "T-T

v'~lJ t:lW7 :-r~W~ lljl V'~"$~~' nttv ~j("

:i'I#t:I':;l7tr7 IJ~"
9'~f Pll;1~} Pj~:t 9'J:l~?R m:-r' '~~ (6)
:t:I:;~ ';~7 t:lW l'1'i:t~ 9Hl!;t} 91~!;t'
"t;l~ '~9~1? ~'~;:-r7 l'1;1'~ t:I~~'~ IJP~~ (7)
'1;1~ ~~:-r m:-r' '~~ (8) q~r ';;1~' N?fc l'1'*1?
:t:I'?'9,?7 'J:l?0J;1~ ll:l!;t-~~ 'tI~7 '1;:l:;>~
i'~~ '~~ l'1;~1m ~~~-:-rm l'1;l;~~i:;:r (9)
:t:I~l'1~
I',' : ...
~,~~~
- .: -
mn~~l'l
T; - :.
I:i'~:;"
': ': :

Scholars differ on the length of the first 'ebed section, the vast
majority undecided between vv. 1-4 and vv. 1-7 or 8; some regard
vv. 5-9 as a separate unit, but disagree on how to associate it with
vv. 1-4. Regardless of these sundry differences, (1) it can be only an
76 H. M. ORLINSKY

individual person that vv. 1-4 and 7-9 allude to, and (2) it is Israel in
exile that is the object of his efforts.

(1) The servant an individual person rather than the people Israel

(a) When God is said to have summoned the servant in order (v. 7)
To open eyes that are blind,
To rescue prisoners from the dungeon,
From the prison those who sit in darkness,
the terms "blind" (sometimes with its parallel "deaf"), "prisoners,"
and "those who sit in darkness," as elsewhere in Second Isaiah (cf.,
e.g., vv. 18 ff. in our very chapter) can refer only to Israel in exile. 1)
Thus the servant can only be an individual person.
(b) It will be seen from the Appendix below, "A Light of Nations,"
etc., that neither of the two expressions in v. 6, O~ Z"I',:JI;! and O"l "NI;!,
points to Israel in relation to the nations, but rather to an individual
in relation to Israel (o~ Z"I',:JI;!) and in relation to the world at large
(0"1 "NI;!).
(c) It is not easy to identify the people Israel with anything in vv.
1-4 (on additional "Jacob ... Israel" in the Septuagint of v. la, see
§ B 3 below). Thus God does not "put His spirit upon" (-I;!~ m, 1m)
an entire people, not even His own people Israel; so that "I have put
My spirit upon him" (v. lbex) would naturally indicate an individual
person. (It need hardly be noted that rdal; in v. 5-"Who gives ...
spirit/life to those who walk in it"-parallel to neshamdh, is something
else again. R.V.S., e.g., spells it "Spirit" in v. 1, but "spirit" in v. 5.)
(d) It makes no sense to assert about Israel in exile (vv. 2-3) that
"He will not cry out or raise his voice and cause it to be heard in the
open. A bruised reed he will not break, a dimly burning wick he will
not quench... " Rather, this is the sort of statement that is made about
God's individual spokesmen, who submit to His will in their un-
popular mission.
(e) Regardless of how one renders the three clauses with mishpdt in
vv. 1, 3, and 4, "(he shall) bring forth/execute/establish/promulgate
judgment/justice (to the nations/in the earth)," it is hardly captive
1) Cf. chap. III, § B above; LIND HAGEN, p. 210; LINDBLOM, p. 78 and n. 25.
Thus in vv. 18 if. in this same chapter, Israel in exile is referred to as "deaf" and
"blind." Of course even those who identify the servant here with Cyrus (against
this identification see immediately below) must identify the "blind" here with Israel
in exile; Babylonia was hardly to be freed by Cyrus!
 CHAPTER FOUR 77

Israel that will achieve this; Israel will be liberated by God and
restored to her homeland. It is natural, on the other hand, both in
specific context and in general, to think in terms of an individual as
the one who will proclaim God's will. By the same token, it is not a
people, but an individual spokesman for God, who will publicize
God's teachings (v. 4b).

(2) The servant is the prophet himself rather than King Cyrus
(a) King Cyrus, great military hero, is hardly one to be described
in such terms as (vv. 2-4)
He will not cry out or raise his voice
Or cause it to be heard in the open.
A bruised reed he will not break,
A dimly burning wick he will not quench ...
In his fine study of "The Use of Figurative Language in Deutero-
Isaiah" (Chap. IV of his The Servant Songs, etc., pp. 75-93), LINDBLOM
has noted some of the metaphors used by our prophet for-as LIND-
BLOM believes-Cyrus. Interestingly, the expressions quoted here are
nowhere cited by LINDBLOM in connection with the Persian monarch;
how could they be?
(b) It is hardly Cyrus who will bring God's torah ("instruction," or
the like) to the world (v. 4). This is evident, e.g., from the blunt
statement of v. 8:
I am the Lord, that is My name;
I will not yield My glory to another,
Nor My renown to idols
with which one may compare 51.4a, "For from Me will instruction go
forth" (N~tl 'T;\~~ :"~Iil'l '~). Cyrus is not yet God's devoted
servant, nor is the God of Israel also his chosen God; he is rather, as
stated clearly in 44.28 and 45.1 ff., merely God's instrument for
crushing Babylon and liberating Israel.
(c) Elsewhere in Second Isaiah, it is the prophet himself, not Cyrus,
who will bring light and freedom to his fellow exiles who live in
darkness and in prison (v. 7).
The precise language employed for the prophet in this section need
not concern us here. Many scholars recognize "kingly features in the
servant of Isa. XLII ... a prophet, but with regal features ... ," some
Supplements to Vetu5 Testamentum XIV 6
78 H. M. ORLINSKY

referring to him as "servant [of God]-king" or "vassal-king" (cf.

LINDBLOM, pp. 18 if.); but that is largely because they regard the
"servant" as being Cyrus. There are also those who associate messian-
ism and/or eschatology with our passage; but while these concepts are
outside the immediate cope of this study, it is very dubious indeed
that they possessed any significance during the biblical period, the
kind of significance that they acquired in post-biblical times, in the
Judaism of the last centuries of the Second Temple and in early
Christianity. Thus LINDBLOM (chap. V, "The Problem of Eschatology
in Deutero-Isaiah," pp. 94-104) has commented (103 f.), "The Second
Isaiah has often been labelled by scholars as an 'eschatologist', and
even as the originator of the Israelite-Jewish eschatology as a whole.
If eschatology means a doctrine, or a message, concerning the end of
history and a new age including 'new heavens and a new earth', there
is no eschatology in Deutero-Isaiah at all. Nor do the Servant Songs
contain any eschatology... In my opinion scholars ... have not seldom
treated metaphors, symbols, figurative pictures as precise and exact
descriptions of reality, quite in opposition to Hebrew modes of ex-
pression. Thus many passages in the Old Testament have been under-
stood as eschatology, while they in fact are simply poetry. The whole
question of the eschatology of the Old Testament must be taken up
afresh along new lines ... " (and cf. in this connection LINDBLOM'S
chap. IV, "The Use of Figurative Language in Deutero-Isaiah," pp.
75-95, and his subsequent article, "Gibt es eine Eschatologie bei den
alttestamentlichen Propheten?" in Studia Theologica, 6 [1953], 79-114).
More is the pity, therefore, that LINDBLOM permitted himself to be
sidetracked, along with so many others, by the concept of Messianism,
a concept that lacks justification for our problem no less than eschato-
logy does.
In a recent discussion of "The Interpretation of Deutero-Isaiah" in
lnterpretationes ad Vetus Testamentum Sigmundo Mowinckel Septuagenario
Missae (Oslo, 1955), C. R. NORTH stated (p. 139), " ...1 find myself
entirely in agreement with VOLZ when he says .. .'Deutero-Isaiah
is shot through and through with eschatology.. .' " One may well
wonder to what extent the sweeping eschatology seen here in the Old
Testament derives from the New Testament period. In a clear state-
ment on "Realized Eschatology" (TBL, 56 [1937], 17-26), C. T. CRAIG
observed (pp. 17 f.): "There is so much that is true in the general
position advocated by Professor (c. H.) DODD that the point at issue
must be clearly isolated. Four positions may be named upon which we
 CHAPTER FOUR 79

are in substantial agreement. 1. Our gospels are primary sources for

the church at the time when they were produced, rather than for the
life-time of Jesus ... 2. 'The message of Jesus was 'eschatological.'
In proclaiming the coming of the kingdom, Jesus did not have any-
thing in mind which was akin to our evolutionary conception of
progress ... 3. Jesus believed that the power of the kingdom of God
was present in his own ministry; in other words, eschatology was
already realized ..."
B. 49.1-6
viJ:l'V~ c~~~7 ~~'V;Rtr1 '7~ C'~1!t ~:P,?V; (1)
:'~~ ,':prtr '~I!t 'v.rp~ ';~'R l~f~ :11i1'
'IN'!!n;, i"T' ,:!t!! ;'''in ~'n:!) 'Ell CWo, (2)
'AT • : ',' T •• : T - ',' .,.: • •.. T-

:';,'l;l9tr il1~~tt~ ,~,~ Ttl7 ';~'~7)

:'~~J;1~ ~~-';'~ ,~,~~ ;'J;l~-,,:tv. '7 '1?N") (3)
'l:l,~!;)~I:t::, '~m ~;,h7 'l;l~~~ v'17
~l;li~~ ';~) (4)
:'P;~-l1~ 'l:l~~'?~ :11;"-11~ '~~~~ 1~~
i, "T~~7 l~f~ '.,~;, :11;" ,~~ ;'J;lv., (5)
~!?.~~ [ K= N'; Q = ] i, ,~,~~, "?tt
~,,~: ~~i!V7
r ... ;";' ';';N' :11;" 'l':P!! "T~:!)N'
:'l:P TT -.. "T':: •• • • :

~"p.~ '~!tV;-11~ c'plj7 "T~~ '7 ~J;1i'ry~ 'j:?~ '??N") (6)

C~U ,iN7 ~'l;lt1~~ ~'V;lj7 '~,vr. [K = "':!tl' ;Q = J'~~:!t~~
:n~lj ;'~R-"TV. 'ml~!V7 l1i'ry'?

Allowing for the difficulties in v. 5, both per se and in context, and

leavingyisra'iJ in v. 3 untranslated, our section may be rendered as
follows:
(1) Listen to me, 0 coastlands,
Hearken, 0 distant peoples!
'The Lord called me from the womb,
He singled me out from my mother's body.
(2) He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
In the shadow of His hand He sheltered me;
He made me a polished arrow,
He concealed me in His quiver.
(3) He said to me, "You are My servant,
... In whom I will glory (or: By whom I will be glorified)."
(4) But I thought: I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strenght in utter futility.
Yet (or: Assuredly) my vindication is with the Lord,
80 H. M. ORLINSKY

And my recompense with my God!

(5) And now the Lord has declared-
Who formed me from the womb to be His servant-
That He will bring Jacob back to Him,
That Israel shall be gathered to Him.
Thus I shall gain honor in the sight of the Lord,
And my God has been my support.
(6) He said, "It is too slight for you to be My servant
To set up again the tribes of Jacob
And to restore the survivors of Israel;
But I will make you a light of nations,
That My triumph may reach to the ends of the earth."
It is almost two hundred years since JOHANN D. MICHAELIS, in
his Deutsche Uebersetzung des Alten Testaments, mit Anmerkungen fur
Ungelehrte[!] (Der achte Theil, Gottingen, 1779), p. 249, cast suspicion
on the genuineness of the word ;N'V;' in v.3. 1) But scholars have not
yet reached agreement on the quality of the word: Is it original or
secondary? Clearly this word has been crucial for many scholars in
the attempt to determine the identity of the servant mentioned in the
verse: Is it Israel or is it an individual person?
By and large, those who identify the (ebed in Second Isaiah with the
people Israel tend to keep our "Israel" here, whereas those who see
in the (ebed an individual generally delete our word. Some scholars
have labored hard to be impartial in their analysis of the problem,
regardless of how they identify Second Isaiah's (ebed. Thus LINDBLOM,
to whom (p. 103) "the servant of the songs is thought of as an in-
dividual. .. but he symbolizes allegorically a community, namely
Israel. .. ," has argued (p. 30 and notes 40-42), "The second problem
refers to the much discussed word 'Israel' in v. 3. From a metrical
point of view nothing certain can be said about the genuineness of
the word. In accordance with my interpretation... the word 'Israel'
can be very well justified if we translate .. .'And he said to me: You,
my servant, you are (i.e. symbolize) Israel, and through you I shall
be glorified.' ...If this explanation is unacceptable, the only satisfac-
tory alternative is to delete the word as an interpretation .. " ZIMMERLI
(-JEREMIAS), committed as he is to "the collective interpretation of
1) "Dis Wort steht im hebraischen, allein es ist mir verdachtig, und deswegen
habe ich es in Klammers eingeschlossen: es k6nnte vielleicht hier eben ein solcher
Zustaz sehn, als Cap. XLII, 1. in der griechischen Bibel." MICHAELIS had transla-
ted the verse (p. 96): "du bist mein Knecht, (Israel) dessen ich mich riihme."
 CHAPTER FOUR 81

Israel as a whole" (p. 24; and cf. his § iii on pp. 17-18), nevertheless
asserts (p. 25), "In the "K'W" of 49.3 we shall have to see an early,
but in the text a secondary midrash made in a collective sense while the
original text will have to be interpreted in an individual sense ... "
And finally, NORTH has wrestled mightily with the text and his
scholarly conscience (pp. 118 f.; and cf. 143 ff.): " 'Israel' ... Metrical
grounds have been urged both for and against its retention. It is clearly
a case where the scholar's judgement is liable to be determined by his
attitude to the problem as a whole. Manuscript evidence is not suffi-
cient to compel deletion. Yet the retention of the word, even on the
collective interpretation, is difficult if the Servant is called Israel in
ver. 3, and then given a mission to Israel in ver. 5 f., unless the in-
finitives there are to be taken as gerundives, with Yahweh as the
subject, which is very doubtful. .. It would greatly simplify the whole
problem if we could with a good conscience delete 'Israel'. For that
very reason I hesitate to do so, since I have a suspicion that it would be
on theoretical rather than on manuscript or metrical grounds. I there-
fore retain it, but with what I feel, in all the circumstances, is justifiable
hesitation. It cannot be said that the stichos is very euphonious, and
there may be deep-seated corruption... Finally, it may be remarked
that the case for the retention of 'Israel' is not so strong that the
collective interpretation may without more ado be assumed."
And so, the philologian will disregard any a priori identification of
the (ebed elsewhere in Second Isaiah and apply to yisra>el in verse 3
the same canons of textual criticism that he would to any problem of
this kind.

(1) The term "Israel" (and ''jacob'') in Second Isaiah

A question that requires a clear-cut answer is one that involves
the precise manner in which the term "Israel" (and "Jacob") was used
elsewhere in Second Isaiah. This crucial point has been dealt with in
the past only in passing and quite inadequately. Thus JULIUS A. BEWER
("Two Notes on Isaiah 49.1-6," inJewish Studies in Memory of George A.
Kohut, ed. Salo W. Baron-Alexander Marx [New York, 1935], 86-90)
closes his study of manuscript Kennicott 96 (see further below) with
the statement (p. 88), "'Israel' is mentioned without the parallel
'Jacob' also in Is. 45.17.25 46.13"; and TORREY is content with a
sweeping reference (p. 380) to "numerous parallel passages (e.g.,
41: 8; 43: 10; 44: 1, 2, 21)." The data offered immediately below
82 H. M. ORLINSKY

will indicate how incomplete and misleading the statements by BEWER

and TORREY really are.
Fortunately, the occurrences of the term "Israel" in chapters
40-55 of Isaiah are numerous enough--43 in all, not counting 4 in-
stances where "Jacob" alone (not in parallelism with "Israel" but in
the same manner as "Israel") is used-to bear statistical analysis.
(a) In no less than 17 instances "Israel" and "Jacob" are used in
parallel lines, exactly as in vv. 5 and 6 in our chapter: 40.27; 41.8,
14a; 42.23; 43.1, 22, 28; 44.1, 5, 21a, 23; 45.4; 46.3; 48.1a, 12; 49.5,6.
Chosen at random, the following passages may be reproduced in
part: 40.27 "!$'ip; '~jl;l~ ~pp.~ '~Nn il~7; 41.8 "'1:t~ "~,ip; ilJ;l~~
~"r-ntl:P'~~ ~pp.~; 43.1 "!$'ip; ~1~~ ~pp.~ ~~j~ (mil" '~tt-il~ ilJ;li,>;
48.12 "~1P7? "t(1ip;, ~Pp.~ ";~ ~~!f'.
(b) In one instance (44.2) "Jeshurun" stands for "Israel" in paral-
lelism with "Jacob": i=l "l;I1t1~ 'fI'f" ~Pp.~ "'~i K1"l;I-"t( (•. ·mil" '~tt-il~).
(c) In one instance (46.13) "Zion" is essentially parallel to "Israel":
"P1~~l;I "t(1~~'? ilW~tZj~ Ti~~:t "l;Itm.
(d) In 21 passages "Israel" is combined with another word to con-
stitute an expression for God, usually in parallelism with YHWH. The
expressions are: "The Holy One ofIsrael" / "~1ip; tt.!'i"R(41.14b, 16, 20;
43.3,14; 45.11; 47.4; 48.17; 49. 7b;54.5-11 instances in all); "The
God of Israel"/"t(1~~ "tI'''~ (41.17; 45.3,15; 48.1b, 2; 52.12-for a
total of 6 instances); "Creator of Israel" / "~1ip; Kjill (43.15); "King
of Israel" /"~1ip; ':J71.? (46.6); and "Redeemer of Israel" / "t(1ip; "tta
(49.7a).
(e) In only 3 passages does "Israel" stand by itself: 44.21 il~~-'~l
"~V1 N" "t('~~ ilJ;lt( "7-"~:W ~"l;I';I~7 ilJ;l~-"':ti ":P "~1ip;, ~Pp.~;
45.17 ,,~ "~,?i~-"i ~tJ'?~l:'1-N'" ~tZj~tl-N" c"~7i~ ni~tZj~ mil"~ ~!fil "~1ip;;
45.25 .,~,~~ ~'!-"~ ~"'?tll;l~' ~i'1~~ mil"~.
(f) As for "Jacob" by itself, the 4 passages are: 41.21 C:?,:t"! ~~1~

~~p'~ ':J71.? '~N" c:?,"tlitJ~i ~W'~tI mil" '~N" where "King of Jacob" -cf.
"King ofIsrael" in 44.6-is parallel to YHWH; 45.19 "l;I1~tt N" ...
. . ."~~~~ ~ilT-! ~Pp.~ ~'!'?' where "seed of Jacob" may be compared
with "seed of Israel" in verse 25; 48.20 ~~v.~ i"f:ti mil" "t(~ ~'7?~ ...,
with which compare the use of "Israel" on several occasions with
 CHAPTER FOUR 83

both "servant" and "redeem" ;1) and 49.26 ~;~~:p '~t-'~ ~:!7"m ...
:l~p'~ ,~~~ ':J7~l" ':Jv.~~ mi'1~.
It will be readily apparent that "Israel" is not used in 49.3 in the
manner that one might expect in the light of its other 42 occurrences-
and the 4 of "Jacob"-in Second Isaiah.

(2) Kenn 96
It is well known that one Hebrew manuscript, Kenn 96, lacks our
word "Israel." The closest study yet made of this phenomenon is that
of BEWER; unfortunately, BEWER was so intent on identifying Second
Isaiah's <ebedwith collective Israel that his analysis is less than objective
and his conclusion less than conclusive.
Every textual critic knows that it is extremely rare for a medieval
Hebrew manuscript of the Bible to be closer to the original text by
having preserved, or by lacking, a certain reading. So that while our
word is present in all the primary and secondary versions and in all the
other Hebrew manuscripts, including both the complete and incom-
plete scrolls of Isaiah commonly designated IQIsaa and IQIsab , the
absence of yisra'C! in Kenn 96 is a priori an important factor in the
textual analysis of our passage. 2) In his study, BEWER was so determi-
ned to prove Kenn 96 as having no value whatever that he concentrated
on singling out the errors of that manuscript elsewhere in Second
Isaiah, where single words were missing and scribal errors had been
made. He did not try to find out whether other variant readings in

1) Thus BROWN-DRIVER-Briggs, e.g., has noted (p. 145b, Qal§ 2c; which should
include also Isa. 52.3, listed there under Niph. § 2) the use of 'Nl in Isaiah 40-66
for God's redemption of Israel in exile. Or cf. NORTH, The Second Isaiah, 99 f.
(with additional reference to AUBREY R. JOHNSON'S discussion of "The Primary
Meaning of V~," Supplements to Vetus Testament-the Copenhagen Congress
Volume,1 [1953],67-77), though care should be taken to distinguish between the
considerable eisegesis prevalent in the book and the exegesis (see the review by
PREBEN WERNBERG-M0LLER in Journal of Semitic Studies, 10 [1965], 283-5). Neither
do I understand the usefulness of such a statement as (p. 13), " ... But VON RAD
[Theologie des Alten Testaments, vol. II] is right when he says that for DI [Deutero-
Isaiah] 'create' (bara') and 'redeem' (gii'a/) are almost synonymous. Yahweh created
and has redeemed Israel (xliii. 1, 14 f.) ... "; but this is not the place to analyze
ga'al in relation to bara'.
3) An excellent parallel to this kind of phenomenon is the unique reading in
Kenn 223, C~n'N ~'1Z1 (for received C~i'1'N) at Job 5.8; see my discussion of this
in "Job 5.8, a Problem in Greek-Hebrew Methodology," Jewish Quarterly Review,
25 (1934-35), 271-278; and chap. V, "The Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint of
Job: the Text and the Script," § A 3, of my Studies in the Septuagint of the Book of
Job, Hebrew Union College Annual, 35 (1964), 61 if.
84 H. M. ORLINSKY

Kenn 96 were noteworthy, he did not study any other Kennicott

manuscripts to determine their characteristics, nor did he attempt to
relate Kenn 96 to other manuscripts recensionally. In fine, our manus-
cript is still in need of objective and adequate evaluation, and its lack
ofyisra'fl may not be dismissed as lightly as BEWER would have us do.

(3) The Septuagint

A word about the Septuagint (LXX). Some scholars, e.g., LUDWIG
KOHLER (Deuterqjesaja [Jesaja 40-55] Stilkritisch Untersucht [BZAW,
37, 1923, p. 37) and SIGMUND MOWINCKEL,l) had asserted that some
LXX manuscripts likewise were lacking "Israel" in our verse. This is
not the case at all; a direct consultation of the data (in JOSEPH ZIEG-
LER'S Gottingen edition of Isaias, 1939) reveals the fact that two
manuscripts read IOI.:xw~ in place of IcrpOI.:'f)A-which is something else
again. The two manuscripts are Q (Codex Marchalianus, sixth century)
and 534 (eleventh century cursive), which constitute part of a sub-
group of the A-recension (ZIEGLER, pp. 21 fr., 29 f.).2)
It has, further, been noted that the term "Israel" is a gloss elsewhere
in Second Isaiah, in the case of the LXX at 42.1; but here too there
has been a lamentable lack of understanding of this version. For
preserved ~~~~ "7W '''~, 'J:lm) '~F?~ i1P~1 ''''''il ;!I-''tJ;l~ "~~ 1t1
N'~;' l:I~il,:!,) the LXX reads IOI.:xw~ 0 nOl.:~<; [LOU, &.v'nA~[Lt\JO[LOI.:L OI.:u1'ou, Icr-
pOl.:'f)A 0 EAEX1'6<; [LOU, 7tpocrEa€~OI.:1'O OI.:U1'ov ~ t\JuX~ [LOU. Since it is not "Israel"
alone but "Jacob ... Israel" (note the order!) that is present, I am
inclined to believe that the LXX - Vorlage read 1~r1N 'i~31) ~p31'
('!t'~l i1r1~' "'n~) 'N'W' (,~. 3) This fuller version is overlong, and it is
likely that 'N'W' •• '~p31' constitutes a gloss already in the Hebrew

1) in De senere profeter (1944; = vol. III in Det gamle testamente), p. 233 (ad loc.),
repeated in his Han som Kommer, etc. (Copenhagen, 1951), 334 f. and more
especially in the English version He That Cometh (Oxford, 1956), p. 191 and
Additional Note XI on pp. 462-4 (cf. also p. 466); the "Note," incidentally, is
not exactly a model of how to deal with a textual problem.
2) ROWLEY, The Servant of the Lord, etc., p. 8 and n. 4--also on p. 51 of the 1957
Book List of the (British) Society for Old Testament Study-has been especially
critical of MOWINCKEL.
3) I have much respect for the Septuagint of Isaiah, as a result of my study of
"The Treatment of Anthropomorphisms and Anthropopathisms in the Septuagint
of Isaiah," Hebrew Union College Annual, 27 (1956), 193-200. JOSEPH ZIEGLER,
Untersuchungen zur S eptuaginta des Buches Isaias (= Alllestamentfiche Abhandlungen,
XII, 3, 1934), does not appear to have discussed our passage; in his commentary
on Isaias (Wiirzburg, 1948), p. 145, n. 3, ZIEGLER deletes "Israel" as "wahr-
scheinlich Glosse nach 44.23 ... "
 CHAPTER FOUR 85

Vorlage of the LXX. But the problem merits a closer study than it has
yet received.
(4) The Meter
The problem of meter is far less troublesome than is generally ad-
mitted (cf., e.g., MOWINCKEL, He That Cometh, 462-4, 466). The
"collectivists," being most eager to retain "Israel," will sometimes
assert bluntly, as BEWER did (p. 87), "the metre requires it"; or cf.
TORREY (p. 381), "the rhythm of the verse .. .is sadly impaired by its
omission." The fact is that both the verse that precedes our own and
the verse that follows it end in 3: 2 meter-v. 2 in!f~~f '~'f. fIJ7 '~~ip~)
'~"l;\1?0; v. 4 'i,I'~~-n~ 'J:'l7~~~ mil'-n~ 'f,?!f~~ l:;?~-exactly the meter
that our v. 3 exhibits with the deletion of yisra>fl. KOHLER deletes
yisra' e/ and construes the verse as 2: 2: 2.

(5) Emendation
The problem of meter, along with other problems, falls by the
wayside entirely if one resorts to emendation or transposition. Thus
RUDOLF KITTEL (Biblia Hebraica 3 ) , following others, ponders the
deletion ofyisra'eI (> 1 MS; dl?) and notes on '~!fJ;l~: "trsp huc v.
5b." ARNOLD B. EHRLICH (Randglossen zur hebraischen Bibel, vol. IV,
1912, p. 178) believes that "~K'ItJ' ist in seiner jetzigen Stellung un-
erklarlich... "; he reconstructs the verse so that yisra' eI appears at the
end and '~!fJ;l~ becomes ,~~~: "du bist mein Knecht, durch den ich
Israel verherrlichen will."

(6) "Israel" in v. 5
It has been noted by many scholars that it is simply impossible for
"Israel" to be original both in our verse 3 and also in verse 5: how can
Israel be given a mission to Israel? And so those who retain "Israel"
in v. 3 are compelled to construe the infinitives in vv. 5 (:l~iTz.i7)
and 6 (:l'Wv7 .. c'Rv7) such that God Himself is their subject.
The complicated character of this construction is clearly apparent
from the well-intentioned manner in which NORTH, e.g., deals with it.
In his The Suffering Servant (pp. 118 f.) he writes, "Yet the retention
of the word [yisra'eI] , even on the collective interpretation, is difficult
if the Servant is called Israel in ver. 3, and then given a mission to
Israel in ver. 5 f., unless the infinitives there are to be taken as gerund-
86 H. M. ORLINSKY

ives [italics mine], with Yahweh as the subject, which is very doubtful,"
whereas in his recent commentary on The Second Isaiah (Oxford, 1964;
p. 189) he asserts, "There is obvious difficulty in these words, if the
Servant is the nation Israel. How can Israel 'bring back' Israel? Ac-
cordingly, protagonists for the collective theory have argued that the
infinitives in this and the next verse are gerundial [italics mine] (cf.
e K 114 0), with Yahweh as their subject. Two translations have been
offered on the basis of this interpretation: (i) 'But now, says Yahweh
.. .in that he brings back Jacob to himself, and that Israel will not
be swept away (Qere reading) .. .' (so HITZIG...); (ii) 'And now, says
Yahweh .. .in that he brought back Jacob (out of Egypt) to himself
and gathered Israel to himself (in the wilderness) .. .it is too little ...
that I should raise up Jacob's tribes .. .' (so K. BUDDE...). These
translations are grammatically possible, but they are awkward and
involved, and most exponents of the collective theory have now
abandoned them." 1) But there is a considerable difference between
"gerund" and "gerundive," and it is sheerest desperation to drag in
these terms and constructions in order to justify what is patently
unjustifiable. The cure is worse than the disease.
In the second of his "Two Notes on Isaiah 49.1-6" (§ 2. Indirect
Speech in Isaiah 49.5), BEWER argued (pp. 89 f.) "that the infinitive
construct with ~ in Is. 49.5, is another example of indirect speech...
'And now Yhwh, who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
has said that he would bring Jacob back to himself and that Israel
would be gathered to him.' The direct speech does not begin till verse
6 and there it is introduced by another "~N') .. ." But surely the very
presence of ,~ "T!l17~ l~!l~ ,.,~, (m;,' "~N ;'Tl17,) immediately before
t'jON' ,~ ~N"!Z.'" "~N !lj:'17' !l!l'!Z.'~ is sufficient not only to indicate the
"T!l17 (rather than m;,') as the subject of !l!l'!Z.'~-why else should the
expression "who formed me from the womb to be His servant" have
been as used here?-but the identical statement is made in v. 6
immediately following:
He said, "It is too slight for you to be My servant
To set up again the tribes of Jacob
And to restore the survivors of Israel. .. "

1) For the sake of completeness, I quote the last sentence of this statement,
"Instead, it is quite properly argued, Israel could have a mission to Israel, very
much as we say that the first mission of the Church is to the Church." Incidentally,
the data in GK § 1140 (p. 351 top) hardly bear on our problem.
 CHAPTER FOUR 87

To get out of this difficulty, BEWER rendered v. 6 as follows: "That I

should raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of
Israel is less significant than that thou art my servant... "-which
is plainly not what the Hebrew says.

(7) Some Significant Expressions

The significance of the expressions employed in our section is

worthy of greater attention than it has attracted hitherto. Such ex-
pressions as "The Lord called me from the womb, He singled me out
from my mother's body" (v. 1) and "And now the Lord has declared-
Who formed me from the womb to be His servant" (v. 5) are how a
prophet will describe the origin of his calling. One thinks at once of
the prophet from whom Second Isaiah drew most, viz., Jeremiah,
who begins his message (1.4-5) with "The word of the Lord came to
me: Before I formed you in the belly, I selected you; Before you
issued from the womb, I consecrated you." It is not natural to as-
sociate our own verses 1 and 5 with the people Israel.
Again, it is only natural that the expressions "He made my mouth
like a sharp sword ... He made me a polished arrow" (v. 2) refer to the
prophet himself; they make no sense if applied to the people Israel.
This is true no less for the second and fourth lines in the same verse 2:
"In the shadow of His hand He sheltered me ... He concealed me in
His quiver," which would be absurd if used for suffering Israel in
exile.

(8) The "I" Construction

An excellent picture of the utter incongruity ofyisra'e/ in context

can be seen from the use of the first person (the prophet himself
clearly being the speaker throughout) in vv. 1-6: .•. '~~'R ... '?~
nT-lN-'':f~37
TAT • : -
" . .'~N"
..
:'l"T-lOi1
• IT • : •
••. 'l~'frr'
• - .:-
'IN':!Ini1
• ... T · : · . .
••• 'D• ••• ,~tz.!...
• :
'~N
••

-~~~ ... 'r;~~~ ... 'J:l'lp:;> '1J:!l ••• 'l;I!y~~ •• "l;Ii~~ '~!$) :'~~J;1~ ;Pl'~!$ [I'~'ir.j
:'t37
r, i1'i1
TT
':'I7N'
- -
••. '~::lN'
"To::
... "~~... :'i17N-rlN 'rl;'
': IT ':: ': 'T

In stating categorically that "The textual evidence sustains 'N'lt"',

the metre requires it, and the strict parallel in Is. 44.21 confirms it"
(p. 87), BEWER has failed completely to note-inter alia-that the
entire context of our section in chapter 49 revolves about the "I", in
sharp distinction from the pertinent section in chapter 44, where the
context revolves about "Israel."
88 H. M. ORLINSKY

(9) The Secondary Origin of "Israel"

The ongln of yisra>eJ as a secondary intrusion in v. 3 may be
readily accounted for variously. One plausible suggestion (cf., e.g.,
NORTH, p. 119) has it that 44.23b, "~~l;1~ "~,ip~~~ (:!p~~ l"nl"l' ,,~~-,~),
was the source of inspiration for the glossator. Others would prefer
44.21 b as that source: 9'l;1i~~ (l"IJ;l~-'1~~ '~ "~,ip~, :!p~~ l"I7~-"~T)
'~v.!~ K" l"IJ;l~ '~-i~:W; thus, e.g., La Sainte Bible places "Israel"
within parentheses and offers this note: "Cette precision, difficilement
campatible avec les vv. 5-6, cf. 42 1+, est sans doute une glosse,
inspiree de 44 21." On the other hand, they may be right who believe
that "there may be deep-seated corruption" (NORTH, ibid.); indeed,
all ofv. 3 (N.B. the length ofvv. 1-2 and 4-6) may be secondary here,
with v. 4 follwing directly on v. 2 in the original. But this need not
concern us here.
To sum up. The argument altogether aside as to who the (ebed of
Second Isaiah in general and of 49.1-6 in particular is, the textual
analysis presented here makes it amply clear thatyisra>el has no place
in v. 3: its presence makes for grievous syntactical and contextual
difficulties; it is lacking in a Hebrew manuscript; its deletion results
in the elimination of every difficulty; and its secondary origin is
readily accounted for. In fine, yisra>el in 49.3 should be deleted. I)
With the deletion of yisra>eJ in v. 3, the entire section, whether
it be vv. 1-4 or vv. 1-6, becomes a natural unit and crystal clear: the
(ebed can only refer to the prophet himself. Calling upon the universe
as his witness (v. 1a), he declares his calling as God-inspired and
determined (1 b). God had sent him forth under His protection to speak
forthrightly to His people (2-3). But he feels that his mission has
been in vain (4). God, however, has now assured him that not only will
he serve His purpose in restoring His exiled people, but he will also
make this great triumph of God evident to the whole world (5-6). The
reader will not fail to note that everyone of these themes is to be
found elsewhere in Second Isaiah.
In keeping with this, verse 7 continues immediately with the
assertion:
... Kings shall see and stand up,
Princes, and they shall prostrate themselves ...
1) This section is a somewhat reworked version of my article "Israel in Isa.
XLIX, 3: a Problem in the Methodology of Textual Criticism," written for the
Sukenik Memorial Volume, Bretz-Israel, 7 (5725/1965).
 CHAPTER FOUR 89

i.e., the whole world will recognize God's unprecedented victory

in behalf of His exalted people Israel.

C. 50.4-9
t:I~i~~7 rID? ~7 1lJ~ mil~ ~tT~ (4)
' ?T' '1v.~-1'l~ 1'l~~7 mn7
:t:I~,~~'p~ ~b~7 UN ~7 ,~~~ 'R~~ 'i?~~ ,~~~
nN ~7-nlJ~ mil~ ~~~~ (5)
:'l'll~Ol
• I:
Ki;! ,inN w,~ Ki;! ~~lN'
T • A'T • T:

t:I~~'bi;!
.... : :
"ni;!~
- T :
t:I~~~i;!
• -:
~l'l1'll
• - T
~,~
.-
(6)
:p"n l'li~7:P~ ~l;I,,)~l?i:t Ki;! ~~~
~l;Il??~~ Ki;!l;;ri;!~ ~7-'!~~ mil~ ~~~N~ (7)
:iVi=!~ Ki;!-~:p ~j~' tz.!~~7t1~ ~~~ ~l;II?W 1~-i;!~
in: il1'~~~ ~T:1~ :J~":-~~ ~p~.,~~ :Ji'~ (8)
:~~~ tz.!~: ~~~~~ i;!~;-~~
~~p.~~~~ N~il-~~ ~7-'!~~ mil~ ~~~~ It' (9)
:t:I~~K~ tz.!w ~i;!~: i~;y.~ t:l7~ 1tl

Allowing for the difficulties in v. 4, this section may be rendered:

(4) The Lord God gave me the tongue of the instructed,
To know how to speak timely words to the weary.
Morning by morning, He rouses,
He rouses my ear
To give heed like the instructed ones.
(5) The Lord God opened my ears
And I did not disobey,
I did not run away.
(6) I offered my back to the floggers
And my cheeks to those who tore out the hair.
I did not hide my face
From insult and spittle.
(7) But the Lord God will help me,
Therefore I feel no disgrace;
Therefore I have set my face like flint,
And I know I shall not be shamed.
(8) My Vindicator is at hand-
Who dare contend with me?
Let us stand up together!
Who is my opponent?
Let him approach me!
90 H. M. ORLINSKY

(9) Lo, the Lord God will help me-

Who can put me in the wrong?
They shall all wear out like a garment,
The moth shall consume them.
The vast majority of scholars limit this section to vv. 4-9, though
the term (ebed does not occur here; ironically, it appears just outside
the section, in v. 10. It is doubtful that anyone would have designated
this an (ebed section were it not for the fact that vv. 6 ff. deal with the
suffering of the speaker; and "suffering," as we saw above, is pre-
cisely what theologians and scholars have-gratuitously-attributed
especially to Second Isaiah, turning him into the "Suffering Servant"
par excellence.
Actually, of course, the entire chapter, no less than chapters 49
preceding and 51 following, constitutes a statement by the prophet
himself (he is the (abdrJ in v. 10 1» in which he rebukes his fellow
Judean exiles for not having more faith than they do in God's deter-
mination and ability to deliver them from exile and to restore them to
a rebuilt Jerusalem and Judah. In this connection, he laments (vvA-9),
as other spokesmen of God have lamented-e.g., Moses, Elijah, Amos,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel-his trials and tribulations, brought on by his own
people's stubborness and hostility, and at the same time he expresses
his faith in God and his determination to persevere in his mission to
his hapless brothers in exile until its successful completion. Verses
10-11; 51.1-3,4-6, 7-8, 9-11, etc., are all exhortations by the prophet
to his own people to heed his divinely inspired words.
Some scholars (e.g., LINDBLOM, p. 32; ZIMMERLI[-JEREMIAS], p. 31)
refer to this section of vv. 4-9, as to similar passages in Jeremiah, as
"confessions." But such post-biblical concepts and terminology, with
their own theological overtones, should be avoided for the biblical
period; thus the discussion of "Confession" (by WARREN A. QUAN-
BECK) in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 1 (1962), 667a-668b, offers

1) Isa. 50.10
i' ml
i':p~ 'ip~ ~~izj mi1~ ~j; C~~ ~~
r~' C~~Wn "1~::r .,~~
:'~1:1'~~ l~W~' mi1~ CW~ n!;)~:
Who among you reveres the Lord,
Heeds the voice of His servant?
Though he has walked in darkness
And had no light,
Let him trust in the name of the Lord.
And rely upon His God.
 CHAPTER .FOUR 91

four books as "Bibliography," all four revolving about early Christian-

ity. The Jewish view revolved about "Confession of Sin" Uewish
Enryclopedia, IV, 217b-219b); there is no confession of sin, or prayer,
in our section. By the same token, the common term "Lieder" /
"Songs" ought to be shunned; our passages and sections are anything
but "Songs," and it would have occurred to no one to designate
passages such as ours as "Songs" had it not been for the Christian
aura that was cast upon them.
It would not be easy for scholars in other fields of humanistic
research to believe that such "methodology" was still widely prevalent
in biblical research. Thus NORTH (The Suffering Servant, etc., 146 f.)
sees our section "as it were, the Gethsemane of the Servant," so that
the Hebrew text of the sixth century B.C. is explained in the light of a
twentieth century A.D. interpretation of a first century A.D. event!
(In his commentary on The Second Isaiah, our section is given the head-
ing, p. 201, "THE GETHSEMANE OF THE SERVANT.") The
same procedure was followed in a recent article on "The Anonymity
of the Suffering Servant" by W. M. W. ROTH Uournal of Biblical
Literature, 83 [1964], 171-179)-except that the unscholarly principle
of obscurum per obscurius was also followed: Jesus intentionally left his
"Beloved Disciple" anonymous, and just so did Second Isaiah treat
his <ebed. Or cf. LINDHAGEN, "The Servant of the Lord" (Expository
Times, 67 [1955-56], 279-283,300-302), p. 302, " ... We may venture to
believe that in the purpose of God the Servant-Songs were primarily
intended to afford guidance to Jesus"; there isn't very much that a
scholar qua scholar can say in the face of such a statement.
It is interesting how a "collectivist" like TORREY dealt with our
section. First of all, the reader of his commentary is told (p. 389)
that "Verse 10 is the resume of verses 4-9, and verse 11 of verses 1-3,
and there is certainly no obscurity in the mutual relation of these two!
It is not easy to see how this device could be improved upon." But
apart from this bland assurance of "certainly no obscurity"-for what
kind of a "device (not to be) improved upon" is it to have vv. 1-3
summarized by v. 11, and vv. 4-9 by v. 10 ?!-it is no accident that his
so-called <ebed section is not dealt with here in its proper place, but the
reader is told (at v. 5, p. 392): "On the general meaning of this and the
following verses, see the introduction to 52: 13-53: 12, and the chapter
on the Servant." However, in these two other sections (respectively
pp. 409 ff. and 135 ff.) our own section is not analyzed as a unit at all;
either a single verse or two is treated out of context-so that, e.g.,
92 H. M. ORLINSKY

50.5-6 (really only v. 6: "I offered my back to the floggers And my

cheeks to those who tore out the hair. I did not hide my face From in-
sult and spittle") is made by TORREY (p. 413) to "approach very
nearly" (it is not easy to believe this!) the idea of "vicarious atone-
ment"-or else sweeping allusion is made to our section as a whole.
On p. 140 TORREY talks of "certainly a collective designation (of the
<Ebed Yahwe) in chapters 50 and 53 ... "; on the very next page this
becomes "In 50: 4-9 the Servant seems to be Israel's better self, the
repentant nation as it should be and might be, listening to Y ahwe's
instruction... "; and on p. 147 we read, "The Messianic leader, who
stands at Yahwe's right hand ... must be the 'righteous Servant,'
endowed with God's own spirit... an example of gentleness and
humility (42: 2, 50: 4 ff., 61: 1); 0 aLXIXW~ of Acts 7: 52... " The inter-
ested and uncritical theologian of two thousand years ago could
hardly have improved on this kind of eisegesis.

D. 53.1-12
We saw above (chap. III, § A) that there is insufficient reason for
regarding 52.13-53.12 as a unit; it is more likely that 53.1-12 is to be
treated separately from 52.13-15, the latter dealing with Israel and the
former with an individual person (see chap. III, § B). On this division,
the section that includes the term <ebed deals with Israel, whereas
the section that lacks the term deals with an individual. The identical
situation obtains also in the third of the four so-called <ebed sections
(§ C. 50.4-9 immediately above); there the <ebed section deals with
an individual and lacks the term <ebed, whereas v. 10 immediately
following, outside the <ebed section, contains the term <ebed and
deals with Israel.
Is it possible to identify the individual in chapter 53? Once it is
realized that the person in 53 did not die but would live to see grand-
children (see Chap. III, § D), that his career was essentially the same as
that of so many other prophets in the Bible (see Chap. III, § C)-in-
deed 50.4-9 supplies a good parallel to this- and that he suffered
(but not vicariously!) at the hands of the very Israelites to whom he
was sent by God to admonish and persuade, then it is only natural
that it is our prophet himself, Second Isaiah, who is that person. For
a restored exile and homeland are precisely what the prophet-facing
insult and perhaps even physical violence-came to announce and what
he would see achieved, he himself enjoying some of that restoration.
The career of no other such spokesman of God, say Jeremiah or
 CHAPTER FOUR 93

Moses, fits the picture. Nor is there sufficient reason for abandoning,
and avoiding responsibility for, the problem by describing this person
as one utterly unknown to us, the "Great Unknown." 1) Why should
this person be different from all other persons in Second Isaiah? Put
differently: would any scholar have thought of treating chapter 53
differently from all other chapters in Second Isaiah had it not been for
the very much later theological atmosphere created for it in Christan-
ity? This is borne out particularly clearly by the well-known passage
in the Book of Acts, chap. 8. We read there (reproducing the Revised
Standard Version):

(1) ... And on that day a great persecution arose against the church
in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region of
Judea and Samaria, except the apostles ... (4) Now those who were
scattered went about preaching the word. (5) Philip went down to a
city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them the Christ... (26) But an
angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Rise and go ... to the road that goes
down from Jerusalem to Gaza" ... (27) And he rose and went. And
behold, an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of Candace the queen of the
Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to
worship (28) and he was returning; seated in his chariot, he was
reading the prophet Isaiah. (29) And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go up
and join this chariot." (30) So Philip ran to him, and heard him read-
ing Isaiah the prophet, and asked, "Do you understand what you are
reading?" (31) And he said, "How can I, unless some one guides
me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (32) Now
the passage of the scripture which he was reading was this:
"As a sheep led to the slaughter
or a lamb before its shearer is dumb,
so he opens not his mouth.
(33) In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken up from the earth." [Isaiah 53.7-8]

(34) And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, pray, does the
prophet say this, about himself or about some one else?" (35) Then

1) For some recent literature along these lines see ErssFELDT, The Old Testament:
An Introduction (1965), 330 if. (pp. 448 if. in the 3rd German edition of his Ein-
leitung).
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 7
94 H. M. ORLINSKY

Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told
him the good news of Jesus.

It is clear that the central personage of Isaiah 53 was naturally identified

with the prophet himself; 1) it was only "supernaturally," through
forced interpretation and alien eisegesis, that the simple, forthright
exegesis of the chapter came to be perverted.

E. The Term <Ebed in Second Isaiah

In recapitulation, this is what emerges from our analysis of <ebed
in Isaiah 40-55. The noun <ebed in all its forms is found a total of 21
times; this does not include the two verb forms in 43.23, 24 ('~tl1~;r()
and 9'l;l1;;r(}).
(1) In 10 of these 21 instances, the reference is clearly to the people
Israel: 41.8, 9; 43.10; 44.1, 2, 21 (bis); 45.4; 48.20; 49.7. In2 additional
instances, both in 42.19 (I am not certain that the preserved text is
original; 44.26 would suggest some reasonable emendation), the
reference must be to Israel in exile (cf. verses 15, 18, 20; 43.8). In
52.13 (see Chap. III, § A) the <ebed is likewise Israel. And, finally,
in 54.17, the plural form, "(Such is the lot of) the servantsj<abde
(of the Lord, Such their triumph through Me-declares the Lord),"
refers to God's loyal Israelites. So that a total of 14 instances of <ebed
is to be associated with Israel.
(2) In 6 passages the <ebed refers to the prophet himself, to Second
Isaiah: 42.1; 49.3 (see § B above), 5, 6; 50.10; 53.11 (see Chap. III,
§A).
(3) One passage remains. In 44.26, <ebed refers to Second Isaiah if
the preserved text is retained:
c'~~~ "~~7~ 1'1~V,1 i':J=il~ '~1 c'i<~
:c~ip~ v'!)i:l,!O' l'1~'~fl;ll'17~l'1; ''JW7~ :l~l'\ 1;l7~w,? '~kv
(24) Thus said the Lord ...1 am the Lord ...
(26) Who fulfills the words of His servant

1) It is scarcely necessary to note here that the Ethiopian eunuch was made to
add "or about some one else" to his query to Philip, "About whom, pray, does
the prophet say this, about himself?" because Philip was ready with "the good news
of Jesus." On the Hellenistic, non-biblical origin of the "suffering servant" idea,
see chap. III, § F. HEINZ A. FISCHEL has published a useful survey of "Die
Deuterojesajanischen Gottesknechtlieder in der juedischen Auslegung" in Hebrew
Union College Annual, 18 (1944), 53-73 (with a chart on pp. 74-76).
 CHAPTER FOUR 95

And carries out the message of His messengers;

Who says of Jerusalem, "She shall be inhabited,"
And of the cities of Judah, "They shall be rebuilt.
I will restore its ruins."

Many scholars, however-and I agree with them-would read

'(~)1~P.
in place of preserved ;,~~. The change is not only plausible
per se but accords well with 7tCX~~c;)"II in Codex Alexandrinus, ~0;';:t~
N~~~:r~ in the
Targum, and parallel '~:r~7~. The "servants" would then
be the earlier prophets and spokesmen of God to His people Israel.
(CROSS, p. 277, n. 20, would see in "His servants," as in Job 4.18,
"the heavenly attendants of Yahweh.") TORREY, on the other hand,
who insists on finding the Messiah (with capital "M") here, suppresses
altogether the evidence for '(~)7~P., emends '~:r~7~ to singular ;:l~7~
on the basis of 42.19, and identifies ;,~~ with the Messiah. I )

1) TORREY (p. 357, at 45.1) has gone so far as to suggest-after deleting "Cyrus"
in both 44.28 and 45.1-that "The Second Isaiah seems to have been the first to
use the term 'Messiah' (n~w/;) as a designation of the ideal leader of Israel and
viceregent of God (cj. Ps. 2: 2). Fortunately, we know from another passage whom
the poet intended by the title, for in 61: 1 the Servant introduces himself with the
words, 'the Lord hath anointed me.' " The contextual justification for these sweep-
ing declarations is hardly apparent.
TORREY has devoted an entire chapter (VIII) to "The 'Servant' and the Mes-
siah" (pp. 135-150). The reader will seek in vain even an attempt to prove that
the Hebrew Bible knew of a superhuman Messiah. By the same token, many
scholars talk freely of a "Messiah-King" with whom they identify Second Isaiah's
cebed (cf. n. 70 in ZIMMERLI [-JEREMIAS], p. 25); but the concept is entirely foreign
to the Old Testament, and its origins are to be sought, rather, in early Christianity.
The Bible knows of kings, priests, prophets, and objects that are anointed, but it
does not know of a "Messiah-King"or "Messiah-Priest" or "Messiah-Prophet" or
"Messiah-Object" (e.g., pillar, tabernacle, vessels).
FOAKES JACKSON-LAKE put it this way (pp. 362 f.), " ... The point in the previous
discussion most important for the investigation of early Christianity is that
'Messiah' is essentially an adjective meaning consecrated or appointed by God,
and was not the prerogative title of any single person until later than the time of
Christ ... It therefore follows that though the title was undoubtedly applied by
his disciples to Jesus, their meaning must be sought from the context in which
the word is used rather than from its established significance ... " And in vol. II
(1922), p. 199, they wrote, " ... the interpretation of the figure of the Servant of
the Lord in Isaiah as a reference to the Messiah is markedly characteristic of Luke
and is not found in Paul, although one would have supposed that, had he known
it, Paul, would certainly have made use of it to support his soteriological argu-
ments." And cf. the cogent analysis by MORNA HOOKER.
ERNST JENNI has a useful, sober article on "Messiah, Jewish" in Interpreter's
Dictionary of the Bible, III (1962), 360a-365b; on p. 363b he writes, "As in Amos,
96 CHAPTER FOUR

In fine, every clear context of the 21 occurrences of <ebed in Second

Isaiah points either to the people Israel or to Second Isaiah himself
as that· <ebed. (parenthetically, not even Cyrus, whether or not the
term "Cyrus" is a later gloss in 44.28 and 45.1 and whether or not
he was ever intended elsewhere in Second Isaiah, is ever designated as
an <ebed of God).

Zephaniah, and other prophets, we find in Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40-55) no expectat-

ion of a Messiah ..."; and on pp. 360b-361a he asserts, "Only in NT times is there
evidence of the 'anointed one' (n'IV~; Aram. Kn'IV ~; Xp~0''t'6c;) as one of the various
designations for the eschatological king ..."
 APPENDIX

"A LIGHT OF NATIONS" (c~u ,iN)-

"A COVENANT OF PEOPLE" (Ci' n'it) 1)

[This analysis is a reworked version of my article "A Light of the

Nations: A Problem in Biblical Theology," written for the 75th
Anniversary Volume of Jewish Quarter!J Review (1966). It was read
originally before the Middle-Atlantic States Section of the Society
of Biblical Literature, New York, April 4, 1965, under the title, "I
Will Make You a Light of Nations."]

A
It has long been axiomatic among biblical scholars that when
Second Isaiah used the expression (49.6) c~u ,iN7 i'l;\m~ "I will
make you a light of nations" (or cf. 42.6, C~il ,iN7 Ci' n'i~? im~' '
"I will make you a covenant of people, a light of nations"), he meant
that he, the prophet, would serve as God's servant not only to restore
the J udean captivity to its homeland but also to bring light and re-
demption to the heathen nations of the world.
TORREY, The Second Isaiah, 380 if., has put it as eloquently and
clearly as anyone: "This chapter may well occupy the central place in
the book... It thus affords an excellent starting point for the study of
(the prophet's) ideas in regard to the Servant, the 'restoration,' the
conversion of the heathen nations, and the final status of the Jews and
Gentiles in God's kingdom...The 'rescue' which had been promised
to Israel, and which was the Servant's first mission (verses 5, 6) is to
include the Gentiles as well; even the most remote nations are to be
gathered in." JAMES SMART, "A New Approach to the <Ebed-Yahweh
Problem" (Expository Times, 45 [1933-34], 168a-172b)-one of the all
too few analyses that breathes freshness and independence in the
midst of stale and rehashed discussions-and KISSANE, The Book of
Isaiah, vol. II, pp. 37, 128, interpret similarly.
On the other hand, SNAITH-who has long stood alone in his
"nationalistic" interpretation of "The Servant of the Lord in Deutero-

1) See chapter IV, § 1 h.

98 H. M. ORLINSKY

Isaiah" (in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy [the Theodore H. Robinson

Volume], ed. H. H. ROWLEY, 1950, 187-200)-put it this way (p. 198):
"But it is far too small a thing to bring back all the Babylonian exiles
(the tribes of Jacob and the preserved ofIsrael). The servant's mission
is to be 'a light of Gentiles,' i.e., a light throughout all the Gentile
lands 'that my salvation may be to the end of the earth,' i.e., my
salvation of Israel, since this is the only salvation in which the prophet
is interested. The servant will be a light to guide every Israelite wan-
derer home. His mission is to gather in all exiles wherever they may
be scattered." SNAITH received considerable support from DE BOER'S
independent researches on Second-Isaiah's Message (1956), in the chapter
(V) on "The Limits of Second-Isaiah's Message" (p. 94: "SNAITH
observed rightly that the servant's mission is limited to his own
people"). On p. 90 he asserted, "No other conclusion can be drawn
from our texts than the statement: Second-Isaiah's only purpose is to
proclaim deliverance for the Judean people ... "; and he rendered
42.6b (pp. 9, 84), "(I, Yhwh .. ) put you to a consolidation of the
people, a light respected by the nations" (and cf. 92, "The renewed

"N', "N',
people will be set as a light, openly seen and respected among the
nations C"l xlii 6; C'~17 Ii 4"). By C17l'1',:l DE BOER under-
stands (p. 94) " ... the consolidation of the people after a period of
disintegration. "
But LINDBLOM, The Servant Songs, etc. (1951)-a fine antidote to
some of the studies on this subject that have emanated from his
Scandinavian colleagues-took issue with SNAITH (p. 27, n. 29). He
would agree with the general view that (p. 26) "In this critical moment
the prophet received a new revelation from Yahweh: he was told that
he had been set apart to be a light to the nations, that is to say: he
was to perform a missionary task in order that the Gentiles might be
saved. The future of Israel is for the moment left out of consideration,
the chief stress being laid on the new task in relation to the Gen-
tiles ... " This conventional view may be found also, e.g., in NORTH,
The Suffering Servant, etc., 143 if.; or in ZIMMERLI-JEREMIAS, The
Servant of God, 29 f., " ... the servant will be a light for the whole
earth. His activity ... glorifies the sole honour of Yahweh and thus
becomes the light and salvation of the whole world"; or BLANK,
Prophetic Faith in Isaiah (1958), 110 f. (and n. 85 on p. 221), 143 (and
n. 4 on p. 223), and 157 (and n. 26 on p. 223).
On the generally accepted view, than, the prophet's message is one
of internationalism, and on an unusually high level, a level that has not
 APPENDIX 99

been achieved-for that matter, not even attempted-by any people in

history. There is good reason, however, to believe that nothing of the
sort was meant by the author; indeed, it is our contention that the pro-
phet was here, as elsewhere in his argument (cE., e.g., chap. III, § B),
utterly nationalistic, and that the concept of internationalism was only
later, over half a millennium later-after Jesus and his contemporaries
had come and gone-read back into our passage and into Second
Isaiah as a whole. In this, our prophet stood four-square in the biblical
tradition, 1) even if thus he disappoints modern scholars and theolog-
ians who would see in his statements the Weltanschauung of our own
Twentieth Century supporters of the League of Nations and the
United Nations.
Let us deal here with the terms t:I;'U ,iN and t:I~ %"l":P in context,
both the literary and historical context.
B
In 49.1 if. (for the argument in detail, see chap. IV, § B above) the
prophet proclaims to the whole world the fact that God has desig-
nated him from the outset as His spokesman to Israel, for the purpose
of leading his fellow Judean exiles back to God. Up to this point,
however, the prophet had labored in vain, for the condition of his
fellow exiles had not changed. But now a new era was to begin: not
only had God designated the prophet as His servant to restore His
people to their homeland but, in addition, He would make him "a
light of nations," with God's victory becoming a world phenomenon.
If one ignores what precedes and what follows this last assertion
of verse 6 (:r?!:tv i1~p-'~ 'J:1~~tzj7 %"l;'07, "That My triumph 2) may
1) I have in mind such passages as Lev. 19.18, "You shall love your neighbor
as yourself," where "your neighbor" is simply "your fellow Israelite, country-
man"; or Mal. 2.10, "Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? .. ,"
where it is not at all the heathern nations that are associated with Israel-as
scholars have perverted the context to indicate-but where the priests and levites
on the one hand, and the Israelite commoner on the other, are involved. Also, e.g.,
Amos 9.7; Zech. 2.14-16; Isa. 14.1-2; 19.18-25; 56.3-8; 66.18-24; Ps. 24-all of
which I have dicussed either in chap. III, § B above or in my article on "Who Is
the Ideal Jew: The Biblical View" in Judaism, 13 (Winter Issue; 1964), 19-28
(from the Hebrew original 'i1 ,i1:1 i1'l" '~, pp. 521-528 in the David Ben-Gurion
Jubilee Volume, ,:1 %''IN'~' l""l 1:1 ",~ !zm~ 1"l%"l:l t:I"pn~ p'p, "" T17
t:I"W,,' '''~W%''l'i1 t:I'lW l':lW, t:I'l':lW); and cf. the section on "Particularism and
Universality in the Teachings of the Prophets" in my Ancient Israel, pp. 163 ff.
2) Hebrew i1~~tzj7 is best rendered "triumph, victory, vindication." Traditional
"salvation" has become quite misleading with its almost wholly post-biblical
theological overtones and associations.
100 H. M. ORLINSKY

reach to the ends of the earth"), then, I suppose, it is possible to assert

that the prophet was to bring God's teachings to the heathen nations
and therby afford the entire world the rewards that derived from
acknowledging Him as their Deity; and this is-as stated above-
exactly what has been universally asserted. But this view is precluded
by the context itself. For not only does verse Sa state that God had
destined the prophet from birth to be His servant for the purpose of
restoring His people Israel ("7~ :If:'P,~ :l~;tD7 ;1;l1~~~ 'i~; ml"l' ,~~ l"I~~n
~p.~~ [K = N1;l ; Q = ] ;1;l1;l~,~~" "And now the Lord has declared
-Who formed me from the womb to be His servant-That He will
bring Jacob back to Him, That Israel shall be gathered to Him"),
but verse 7 no less clearly expresses what may be termed the other side
of one and the same coin, viz.:
Thus said the Lord,
Redeemer (and) Holy One of Israel,
To (or: Concerning) the one 1) despised by men,
Abhorred by nations,
The slave of rulers:
Kings shall see and stand up,
Princes, and they shall prostrate themselves-
Because of the Lord, who is faithful,
The Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. 2)
In other words, far from bringing "salvation" to the heathen nations,
the prophet's task in the service of the Lord is to lead exiled Israel to
redemption and thereby cause the nations and their leaders-who
until then held the exiles in contempt-to acknowledge abjectly the
omnipotence of Israel's faithful God. And the prophet continues
(vv. 8-9, 13):
(8) Thus said the Lord:
In a time of favor I have answered you,
1) Israel in exile is clearly meant here. Note that whenever a major category
such as "nations," "peoples," "ends of the earth," "ruler," "kings," "potentates,"
"princes," and the like is employed in Second Isaiah, the counterpart is "Israel";
see chap. III, § B above, where mention is made also of the hyperbolic use of these
and other terms in relation to Israel.
2) 49.7 ;tDii~ 1;l~,~~ 1;l~ ml"l'-'~~ l"I~
tl'7;,b i~;r7 ''U :l~~7?7 tD~~-l"It:r7
~~r)r1~~' tl'i~ ~~Rl ~N!~ tl':;l77?
:::tJO:r~l1;l~,~ tDi~ l~~H ,~~ ml"l' W~7
 APPENDIX 101

In a day of triumph I have helped you;

I have kept you
And I have made you a covenant of people, 1)
To restore the land,
To allot the waste heritages,
(9) To say to the prisoners,2) "Go free!"
To those in darkness, "Show yourselves!" ...

(13) Sing, 0 heavens,

Exult, 0 earth,
Break forth into song, 0 mountains!
For the Lord has comforted His people,
Will have compassion on His afflicted ones. 3)

One could readily go on in this vein, not only for the rest of the
chapter but throughout Second Isaiah, citing chapter and verse in
every instance, to show the comfort that Israel in exile would receive
from the. Lord, in sharp contradistinction to the treatment that the
heathen nations would receive in the process. In the light of the data
offered above in chapters III and IV, the following quotation from the
last five verses of our chapter will suffice here (vv. 22-26):
(22) Thus said the Lord God:
I will raise Myhand to nations
And lift up My standard to peoples;
And they shall bring your sons in their bosoms,
And carry your daughters on their shoulders.
(23) Kings shall be your attendants,
Their queens shall serve you as nurses.

1) For the expression !:I~ n~':;t2 ,~~~, see § E below.

2) Such expressions as "prisoners," "those (who dwell) in darkness," and
"the blind" always refer in Second Isaiah to Israel in exile; see chap. III, § B.
3) 49.8-9, 13 m:"l~ ,~~ :"I:;' (8)
'~lrmi :"IVW7!:I;':;t~ '~l)~~p' Ti~' N?i1
!:I~ n~':;t7 'm~' 'i¥~'
:n;~~iZ.i n;~tt~ ~'l:tm7 n~ !:I'i<07
~~~l) ,';'n~ '';'~'? ~K~ !:I"~O~,? '~K,? (9)
!:In~:p,~
TO:-
!:I..t)tzj-~:l~~ ~:P"
"T: T: :-
!:I~:l'~-~:P
°T:-

:-.!n !:I~'O ~n~~~ n~ '7'~' !:I~~~ ~!' (13)

:!:In'~
••• _: '"l:P' - m:"l' !:IMl-~:l)
TO-:- ;~:P -..
102 H. M. ORLINSKY

They shall bow to you, face to the ground,

And lick the dust of your feet.
(26) I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
They shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.
And mankind shall know
That I the Lord am your savior,
The Mighty One of Jacob, your redeemer.1)
In fine, it is but eisegesis-the clear perversion of the original and
plain meaning of the text-to make the prophet as "a light of nations"
mean that Israel was in exile in order to bring redemption to the world.
In point of fact, Israel was in exile only because she had transgressed
her covenant with the Lord, and she would be restored because-the
prophet maintained, as all the prophets did-God would never cast
her off.
c
Our expression "a light of nations" occurs also in 42.6. The pro-
phet begins with the assertion (vv. 1-5) that God, creator of the world
and author of all life on it, has decided that the time has come for His
servant 2) to execute His judgment throughout the world. In the words
of the prophet (vv. 5-6):
(5) Thus said God the Lord,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,

1) 49.22-26 mil' '~'i~ ''''~-il:il (22)

'l:)l !:I"~ !:I'~:;:-'~' ''7' !:I'il-'~ ~w~ mil
I." • T • - '; : 'T' '0' T ': •••

:il~~i;'~T;l '1tlil-'~ :Pt1l~~ n~nf :n~ ~~'~m

1~t1P'~'~ !:Iry·tli'~, 1~~~N !:I':;l7~ ~'iJ' (23)
~~n7; 1~7n '!;~117 ~'t!tlt¥~ n~ !:I~~~
:'JP ~!V~~-~6 ,~~ mil' .~~-.~ 0\'1~1~'
:~?7f~ i":r~ .~t¥-!:I~' lJi~7'" ,b;1;l n~~t) (24)
mil' ,,.,~ il~-'~ (25)
~~7f~ r!~ lJii'7"'~ nR~ 'b~ .~t¥-!:I~
:~'~i~ ':;ll~ 1:~f-1'1~' ~'!~ ':;ll~ 1~'!;-1'1~'
l~'1iltp~ !:I~' O'Q~~' !:I?~f-l'1~ 1~~i~-1'1~ 'T;l7;>~m (26)
:~R~~ ,.~~ 17~l' 1~r~i~ mil' .~~ .~ '~f-'~ ~:;:1;'
2) I have argued above (chap. IV, §A) that the servant in 42.1 ff. is the prophet
himself (as against, e.g., Cyrus). However, our analysis of the expression "a
light of nations" is not affected by this problem.
 APPENDIX 103

Who spread out the earth and what it brings forth,

Who gave breath to the people upon it
And life to those who walk on it:
(6) I the Lord have summoned you for triumph;
I have grasped you by the hand,
Have guarded you and made you
A covenant of (a) people, a light of nations
( :c~;~ ";~7 cw n~!i1~ '9m~' '9,,)~~" ..).1)
Once again, as in 49.6 (§ B above), if this passage is isolated from
the context of chapters 40-55 as a whole and from the verses im-
mediately following in particular, one may, I suppose, agree with the
virtually unanimous opinion of scholars that God had summoned His
servant in order to achieve a covenant of all nations. Unfortunately for
this-albeit universally held-view, it is flatly precluded by the verse
immediately following (v. 7), one which is connected with it most in-
timately syntactically. For our prophet proceeds at once to assert
vigorously and unequivocally that the function of God's servant is
To open the eyes of the blind,
To set free prisoners from confinement,
From the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
i.e., to liberate from captivity His people Israel. And it is scarcely
necessary to add that-again as in the case of 49.6 ff. (§ B above)-the
rest of the chapter, and what follows thereafter, is essentially but an
elaboration of this theme; cf., e.g., vv. 8 and 13:
(8) I am the Lord, that is My name;
I will not yield My glory to another,
My renown to idols.
(13) The Lord goes forth like a warrior,
Like a fighter He whips up His rage;
He yells, He roars aloud,
He charges upon His enemies. I)
Or finally, contrast v. 16, which describes God's restoration of exiled
1) For the entire Hebrew text of this section, see chap. IV, § A, p. 75.

.,trtt7
2) 42.8, 13
:C~~'Q'?7 ~lJ~;:U!~ ltl~-~'~ ;";"
~'J;:l!?~ ~~T¥ ~~;, '~~ (8)
;'~~i< ,~~; n;~07~ !V~~:p ~~~ 'i::l~~ ;'w (13)
:'#~J;'l: "~;N-~~ IJ'!~~-~~ ~~!;
104 H. M. ORLINSKY

Israel, with v. 17, which asserts the utter discomfiture of the heathen
nations:
(16) I will lead the blind by a road they did not know,
I will make them walk by paths they never knew.
I will turn darkness before thm to light,
Rough places into level ground.
These are the promises,
I will keep them without fail.
(17) Driven back and utterly shamed
Shall be those who trust in an image,
Shall be those who say to idols,
"You are our gods." 1)

D
Isa. 60.1 ff. is pertinent for any discussion of our expression "a
light of nations." Thus OTTO A. PIPER, in his article on "Light" in
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, III (1962), has observed (p.
131a), " ... thus faithful Israel is to become a light for the Gentiles (Isa.
49: 6; 60: 3, 5; 62: 1)." Whether the author of 42.6 and 49.6 was also
responsible directly for 60.1 ff. or only indirectly (i.e., the author of
60.1 ff. being influenced by him; cf., e.g., KISSANE, p. 255; LINDBLOM,
p. 65 and n. 27) is immaterial at this point.
It should come as no surprise by now to learn that the inter-
nationalistic interpretation-read: eisegesis-of scholars to the con-
trary, the context of chap. 60, exactly as that of chapters 42 and 49,
affords no support whatever for the view that Israel was something of
a goodwill missionary to the heathen nations; the text of 60.1 ff.
declares forthrightly against this:
(1) Arise, shine, for your light has dawned,
The Presence of the Lord has shone upon you!
(2) Behold! Darkness shall cover the earth,
And thick clouds the peoples;

1) 42.16-17
1:l?~i1~ ~171~-N~ 1'1;~'tl1=i1 ~17'~ N~ 'lJ'7.f I:l"'~ ~J;l~7;~'" (16)
';!V'1;17 1:l~'j(P'~~ ';N7 I:ltnP?7 'lJ~J;I~I:l'~tc
:1:l~T-l~T17
I' : - - :
N'=" 1:l1'1'iV17 1:l~'~':T:1 :1';1N
: • • -: • T : - ': .,

'='9P"~ 1:l~"I?~tr 1'1;;~ ~!V~~ ,;n!;t ~lb~ (17)

:~l~:1''='N I:lT-lN :1~l:)~,=, 1:l"~k:1
I" .:: ... - T •• - 1 .: T
 APPENDIX 105

But upon you 1) the Lord will shine,

And His- Presence over you be seen.
(3) And nations shall walk by your light,
Kings, by your shining radiance.
(4) Raise your eyes and look about:
They are gathered all, they come to you;
Your sons shall come from afar,
Your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. 2)
(5) As you behold, you will glow:
Your heart will throb and thrill-
For the sea's abundance shall pass on to you,
The wealth of nations shall flow to you.
(6) Trains of camels shall cover you,
Dromedaries of Midian and Epbah-
All of them coming from Sheba...

1) Note the sharp antithesis syntactically between y'~-l"Il?~~ ':J~ntl m:,-~~)

C~7iltt7 ('9?P'~ in the first part of the verse and (ml"l~-nj1~) ':J~~~' in this second
half.
2) It need scarcely be noted here that it is the "nations... kings" in verse 3
immediately preceding who will do the carrying; that is why they are mentioned
in the first place.
In this connection it may be noted that preserved ~N:J~ (p;n1~ ':J:~~) probably
harbors original ~N:;1~, "they (viz., "the nations ... kings" /C~~~7? ... C:;~ in v. 3)
shall bring (your sons from afar)." Our vv. 3-4 recall at once v. 9 below ("to
bring" /N~:;107), and 43.5-6 (where God addresses Israel in captivity; the Hebrew
text may be found in chap. III above, p. 45, n. 1):
(5) Fear not, for I am with you:
I will bring (N~:;1~) your seed from the east,
And I will gather you from the west;
(6) I will say to the north, "Give up!"
And to the south, "Hold not back!"
Bring (~~~:;10) My sons from afar
And My daughters from the ends of the earth.
and 49.18, 22 f.:
(19) Look up all around you and see:
They are all assembled, are come to you!. ..
(22) Thus said the Lord God:
I will raise My hand to nations
And lift up My ensign to peoples;
And they shall bring (1N~:;1tm their sons in their bosoms,
And carry their daughters on their shoulders.
(23) Kings shall be your attendants,
Their queens shall serve you as nurses ..•
106 H. M. ORLINSKY

(7) All the flocks of Kedar shall be assembled for you,

The rams of Nebaioth shall serve your needs ...
(9) Behold the coastlands await Me,
With Tarshish-ships in the lead,
To bring your sons from afar,
And their silver and gold as well ...
(10) Aliens shall rebuild your walls,
Their kings shall wait upon you-
For in anger I struck you down,
But in favor I take you back.
(11) Your gates shall always stay open,
Day and night they shall never be shut,
To let in the wealth of nations,
With their kings conveying it.
(12) For the nation or the kingdom
That shall not serve you shall perish;
Such nations shall be laid waste ...
(14) Bowing before you shall come
The children of those who tormented you;
Prostrate at the soles of your feet
Shall be all those who reviled you... 1)
Etc. etc.

1) 60.1-14 :n:n 1:~~ i1,i1' 'i::l=?~ 1,iK K~ ':P 'iiK 'l?~v (1)
C'~1(\7 ~~!~1 n~-i1l~~; 1~ntJ miJ-':p (2)
:i1~1~ 1'~~ i'i:J=?~ m;,' n"T: 1:~~'
:1!1",)I i1~7 C'=;l77?~ 1,iK7 C:il ~:l7=J' (3)
1~-~K~ ~~~R~ C~f '~"')~ 1:~'~ ::l'~lr'~if' (4)
:i1~~~tl ,~-~~ 1:lJl~~ ~~::l; vin'V~ 1:~f.
1~~7 :l01' 'O~~ T;l"')m, '~"')T:l t~ (5)
:1? ~~:l; c'i~ ~'!J C; Ti~n 1:~~ 1$;)=J~-':P
i1~'~' 1;'1l? ''J=?~ 1\l)~T;l C'7~~ rw,?~ (6)
~KW' i1li:J~~ ::li1t ~~:l' K::lv,;~ C~~
T'T: TT AT T:' T,

:~"W::l' mi1' ri~i1m

I" - : • :

1~~!1",)~; ni'~t '7'~ 17 ~~~R: "1P. l~~-~f (7)

:.,~~~ 'T:l",)~,?T:l n'~~ 'lJ~rl? Ti~1-~~ ~~~~
:"i1'njt"K-~K
I','·· ... -: ':
C'li":l' i1l't)~:;)T-l ::l~!l ;'~K-'~ (8)
• -: Tn'" : T T ': •• •

i1~ittiKif. tzl;'~"')l:l ni"~~, ~~R; C'~~ ''?-':P (9)

cn~ C~=JP C~I?~ v;n1~ 1:~~ K':;!=J7
:1J~$;) ':P ~~1if': !Z.ii'R'?' 1:tJ7~ mi1' CW7
 APPENDIX 107

E
So too, the expression c~ l'l'''il in 42.6 and 49.8, however it be
translated, must be understood strictly within the limits of Judean
nationalism; the context-the same as that of c~u ,iN -precludes
any broader interpretation.
In 42.6 (see § C above, p. 103), it will be recalled, the prophet
proclaims to his fellow exiles:
I the Lord have summoned you for triumph,
I have grasped you by the hand,
Have guarded you and made you
A covenant of (a) people, a light of nations
( :c~il ,iN7 c~ l'l":t7 'TP!;l~' 'TJ,,)~~'" .).
Exactly as in the case of "a light of nations," so do the verses that
precede and follow our own make it amply clear that Israel alone is to
benefit from God's actions; the purpose of the "covenant" is the
liberation of captive Israel. As put in verse 7 immediately following:
To open the eyes of the blind,
To set free prisoners from confinement,
From the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

or in verse 16:
I will lead the blind by a road they did not know,.
I will make them walk by paths they never knew.
I will turn darkness before them to light,
Rough places into level ground.
These are the promises,
I will keep them without fail.

':J~~f\,,)~; cry'~7~~ ':J~tlbi1 '~~-'~:t ~l~~ (10)

:':J'f:\,?lJi '~i~"):;1~ ':J'J:I'~iJ 'til:;;P:t '~
~'1~W~ N" ;,1;;" clti' "T'~~ ':J~'J~~ ~nJ;l~~ (11)
:c't~;'~ cry'~7~~ C7i~ "'IJ ':J7'~ N':;1P7
:~:lJP~ :l"tt c~ilm ~"T?N' ':J~"T:t~~-N" ''#~ ;'~7'?~m 'i~tJ-'~ (12)
'11;t~ ,~tz,i~J;l~ 'P1T:l 'aii'f Ni:l; ':J~'7~ 'f'\l~7tJ "Ti:l f (13)
:"Tf.~~ "tl cip,?~ 'l!11P~ cip,? '~~7
':J~~~~'?-":r ':J7'7~1 l'liE;)~-"~ ~'nlJ~iJ' ':J:~~,? '~f lJin~ 'TJ'7~ ~::l7P' (14)
:"~'if'7 'aii"TP li",? ;";" "~ 17 ~N,,)R'
108 H. M. ORLINSKY

The context in 49.8 is identical. As asserted in verse 8-9 (see § B above,

pp. 100 f.):
(5) Thus said the Lord:
In a time of favor I have answered you,
In a day of triumph I have helped you;
I have kept you (ii~~')
And I have made you a covenant of people (l:I~ 11~·#? i~~')
To restore the land,
To allot the waste heritages,
(9) To say to the prisoners, "Go free!"
To those in darkness, "Show yourselves!" ...
How much clearer could anyone wish the author to be in explicating
l:I~ l1~i:r'7 i~~' ii~~' (8aoc) than by following immediately (8b~) with
l1;7:t~fti 11;~t'~ '~J:!m7 r1~ l:I~i<iJ7, "To restore the land [of Judah, or
Israel1, To allot the waste heritages"? And note, further, how en-
thusiastic the prophet waxes in describing the return of the captivity
(vv. 9 fr.):
~?~;:t 'iJ!p'h~ '!p,~7 ~N~ l:I~i~O~7 ,bN7 (9)
:l:Il1~:!7'~ l:I~~!:IlTJ-~:>~~
IT • T :: - T : •
~:!7'~
: •
l:I~:>'''T-~:!7
• T: -

lTJ~lTJ'1 ~'lTJ l:I::;'~-N~' ~N~'::t~ N~' ~~:!7'~ N~ (lO)

': ... TT T T •• - : T : • : T: •

:l:I~m~ l:I~~ ~:!7~~~-~:!7' l:Ili1l~ l:I~n'~-~::;,

I" -:-: • - .0 - - : •• - : - : T -: - : •

q~~':1; ~lJ'9~~ 'iJ?J7 ~jiJ-~~ ~l;l~~ (11)

:l:I~~~9 r?~~ i17~' l:I~~~ Ti!:l~~ i17~-i1?t1' ~N~: j?;n,~ i17~-i1?;:t (12)

reaching a climax in v. 13 with an outburst of joy:

::In l:I~iiJ ~n~!;l~ r1~ ~'7w l:I~~~ ~l'
:l:In'~ '~l:!7' ;~:!7
."-: T'-:- -
mi1~ l:IMl-~::;'
- •.

Or we may read on a verse or two (14-15):

:~m~~ 't'lN1 iI~i1~ ~~~!~ Ti~~ '~NT-l1 (14)
::t~!?~-1~ l:Ilj'1~ :17~:!7 i1'~ n~~J:lt! (15)
:'iJPil~~ N~ ~~lt$' i1~I;I~~J:l i17~-l:I~
But there is hardly need to go on and on in this vein; Second Isaiah is
full of it, from beginning (40.1-2, "Comfort, oh comfort My people,
Says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem... ") to end (55.12-13,
"Yea, you shall leave [the Babylonian exile] in joy And be led home
secure. Before you, mount and hill shall shout aloud, And all the trees
of the field shall clap their hands ... ").
 APPENDIX 109

The same picture of 11"':1 is painted in chap. 55, where the "eternal
covenant" (c7i17 11"'~) involves God and His people Israel (e.g.,
vv. 3-5): if only they will heed Him, He will make them an everlasting
covenant and fulfill the promise made to David to establish a powerful
dynasty of his seed. I ) And whoever be their author and whatever the
source of their influence, the statements in 59.20-21 and 61.9 can only
make this theme even more crystal clear. In chap. 59 the prophet
addresses himself to purified Israel:
(20) And He [viz., God] will come to Zion as a redeemer,
To those in Jacob who turn from transgression-
Said the Lord.
(21) As for Me, this is My covenant with them,
Said the Lord:
My spirit which is upon you
And My words which I put in your mouth
Shall not depart from your mouth,

1) 55.3-5 C?~'?~ "1:IJ;1~ ~17~W "'7~ ~~7~ C~m( ~wtJ (3)

:C"~'?~~tJ in "'90 c7i17 11"'~ C~7 il~'l:;>~'
:c"~~7 m~~~ i"~~ '''fllJ~ c"I'p~N7 i~ 1tJ (4)
~~~'1; 'TJ"7~ 1~171;-N~ "il) N1RT;l17jlJ-N~ "i~ lt1 (5)
:1J~!;I ":;J ~~1if'~ 1ZtiiR~' 'TJ"v~~ mil" 1~~7
There is, clearly, some hyperbole in vv. 4-5; but scholars generally are not aware
of hyperbole, a literary phenomenon that would interfere greatly with theology.
I note this statement by LINDBLOM, who is one of the exceedingly few to recognize
rhetoric in the Bible (cf., e.g., his chap. IV, "The Use of Figurative Language in
Deutero-Isaiah," in Tbe Servant Songs, etc.), p. 55, "As king David was a witness
(i17) to the peoples, a leader and commander of the nations, Israel will call upon
nations it does not know, people who do not know Israel will run unto it, since
they have realized the power of Yahweh, the God of Israel. In this passage (LV.
1-5), which deals with the spiritual empire of Israel, we meet with another ex-
pression of the idea of C17 11"':1, the confederation of peoples with Israel as its
centre ... The idea of the conversion of the Gentiles is common to nearly all
oracles of this group." I suspect that the author of our passage and his audience
were more realistic, and less concerned about post-biblical theology and messianism
and eschatology, than the interpreters of the post-biblical era have been. In the
note (15) on his statement, LINDBLOM had asserted (p. 56), " ... the expressions
in vv. 1-2 seem to me to be entirely metaphorical. .. " In the first part of this same
note (p. 55) LINDBLOM had observed that "In his Commentary BENTZEN says that
this is the first occurrence of the invitation to the eschatological Messianic meal";
LINDBLOM surely went far beyond the call of scholarly politeness in limiting his
comment on this weird notion to little more than "I cannot agree .. :' The "Two
Prophecies from 520-516 B.C." by JULIAN MORGENSTERN (Hebrew Union College
Annual, 22 [1949], 365-431) constitute studies of our 55.1-5 and 60.1-3, 5-7.
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 8
110 H. M. ORLINSKY

Or from the mouth of your children and children's children-

Said the Lord-
From now on and forever. I)

And in 61.8-9-again it is Israel that is addressed:

(8) For I the Lord love justice,
I hate robbery and wrong;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
And I will make an everalsting covenant (c?i:;7 l"l'''):t~)
with them.
(9) Their descendants shall be known among the nations,
And their offspring among the peoples;
All who see them shall acknowledge them,
That they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. 2)

The expression c:w l"l'''):t (7 9m~m has been variously translated.

The American (Chicago) Translation rendered "(I have made you)
a pledge to the people" ; Revised Standard Version "(I have given you
as) a covenant to the people;" La Sainte Bible (Jerusalem Bible)
"(Je t'ai designe comme) alliance du peuple." Perhaps "a people's
(i.e., national) covenant" was intended. The rendering "a covenant-
people," i.e., a covenanted people, would be acceptable but for the
fact that this idea would more likely have been worded l"l''')~ c~7 in
Biblical Hebrew. On EHRLICH'S view there is no problem in the first
place; he emends C:;7 l"l,,~l;! in both instances to c:w mi~7 (Randglossen,
IV, ad locc.), whence MOFFAT'S "(1 have formed you) for the rescue
of my people." Finally, out of the very many comments on our term,
I should like to quote that of Rashi: ,mN N';' ;":;7W'l;!, 1'l"lN'P (i.e.,
God is addressing the prophet); C'izll"lw= )"Wl"lW 'l"l~wn~ ;'l"l';' l"lNt, l'~N'
c;,l;! "N;,l;!, 'l"l,,~l;! '~:;7 l"lN (~,tzjl"lW or (i.e., when I formed you, this

1) 59.20-21 :;";" c~9 ~p~~~ :;7W,? '~~7~ l;!~illi'~7 N:t~ (20)

-,~~ ''J:ti~ 9'~:W ,~~ 'IJ~' ;,w '~t' CpiN 'J:1''')~ l"l~t '~~1 (21)
,~t' 9~i! :;7'1! '~~~ 9~i! '~~~ 9'~~ ~tzj~~;-~l;! 9'~~ 'J:'l,?W
:c~i:;7-i~' ;'l;1~~ ;";"
2) 61.8-9 ;'~i:;7~ l;!1~ N~izl ~~l¥~ ~tTk ;";" '~~ '~ (8)
:c;,l;! l"li':lN cl;!i:;7 l"l"~~ l"l~N::l Cl"l';l:;7~ 'l'll"ll'
!'.'T : '.. T ': ',"'::': T T '.. : '-T:

C'!W:j 1il"l~ c;;r'~~~~, c:Wi! C~il~ :;7ji1, (9)

:;";" ':J'J~ :;7'J! CtT '~ c~"~~ c;;r,~,-l;!f
 APPENDIX 111

was My purpose, that you would make My people My covenant [or:

that you would bring back My people to My covenant] and bring
light to them).

F
Something should be said here about another expression, one that
is quite pertinent to our own c;i~ ,iN7 1'l;lm~ of 49.6, viz., C;U? N'~~
1'l;ltl~ in Jer. 1.5. The whole passage reads (vv. 4-5):

(4) The word of the Lord came to me:

(5) Before I formed you in the belly, I selected you;
Before you issued from the womb, I consecrated you;
I designated you a prophet to (or: for) the nations. i)

One has but to proceed to read all of the book of Jeremiah-re-

gardless of whether this or that passage or chapter is generally accepted
by scholars as original with Jeremiah or a,s of secondary origin-to
realize that Jeremiah was God's spokesman to Judah alone.
Thus when Jeremiah protests-as was characteristic of God's
spokesmen generally (cf. chap. III above, § C, pp. 56 f.)-that heis but a
youth and without skill as a speaker (v. 6), God's reply (v. 8) is, "Do
not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you." Whom did
Jeremiah fear? From the hands of which nation would God rescue
him? Clearly (cf., e.g., 1.17-19) it is his fellow Judeans of whom
Jeremiah need fear, and from whom God stood ready to deliver him.
Indeed, this was precisely the occupational hazard of every prophet:
harm at the hands of his fellow Israelites, whom he had come to
rebuke and threaten.
What follows is a series of declarations to Judah about what would
happen to her if she persisted in her evil ways; but as to the heathen nati-
0ns' they were nothing more than God's rod of anger and punishment,
mere tools in His hands, against sinful Judah; cf., e.g., 1.14-16;
4.16-18; 5.15-17; 6.22-26; etc. Jeremiah will be ordered to proclaim
"in the hearing of J erusalem" (c.7~~'~ '~1!;til, 2.1-12), but never in the
hearing of any heathen nation; God will tell Jeremiah to "speak"

1) Jer. 1.4-5 :'~N7 '?~ ;";"-';11 'i)~) (4)

1'f)~:rRi) C!j'~ N~t1 C'!f~~ 1'l;l~:r~ l!f~~ 1!~~ C'!fil (5)
:9'Ptl~ c;i~? N'~~
112 H. M. ORLINSKY

(tli~1' ... ) to his Judean countrymen (1.17; 7.22; 22.1 if.; 26.2; 35.2),
but never to any non-Israelite people; only Israelites-never any of the
gentile nations-will be exhorted to "listen" (~:s:~~ .. ) to God's word
(2.4; 5.20-21; 7.2, 23; 10.1; 11.2,4,6,7; 13.15; 17.20; 19.3; 21.11;
29.20; 42.15; 44.24, 26). Significantly, in each of the two passages in
which ~:S:1?!!i is clearly associated with c:i~, the "nations" are treated
hyperbolically, exactly as when the "heavens" and the "earth" are
called upon to be witness to God's message or action in regard to
Israel; they are 6.18-19:
(18) Therefore, hear, 0 nations,l)
And know, 0 congregation,
What will happen to them;
(19) Hear, 0 earth:
I will bring harm upon this people ... 2)

and 31.9-11
(9) ... For I am a father to Israel
And Israel is my first-born.
(10) Hear the word of the Lord, 0 nations,
And declare it in the distant coastlands.
Say: He who scattered Israel will gather him,
And He will guard him as a shepherd his flock.
(11) For the Lord has ransomed Jacob,
Has redeemd him from hands too strong for him. 3)

1) Mention should be made of the fact that the identity of the terms (C) "l and
:'I:l"~~ in Jeremiah is not always readily determined. Thus in 1.5 C"l is interpreted
by RASH! as the Judeans; in 1.10 the phrase ni:l?7?7piJ-~P' c:i~iJ-~p is regarded
by some scholars as secondarily derived from 18.7, where the context is wholly
Judean. Scholars generally tend to overlook the frequency with which the term
tC)"l is used in the Bible for the people Israel: this is probably a Jewish even more
than a Christian prejudice. But the exposition of our problem, it will be noted,
is based on the received text and the generally accepted inteq:~retation of it.
2) Jer. 6.18-19 :C#-.,~~-n~ :'Il~ '~1~ c:.i~tr ~:S:7?~ l~? (18)
cni:J~I;1~ ''1~ :'IJiJ c~tr-~~ :'I~1 ~':;1~ ':;ll~ miJ n~tr '~7?~ (19)
:i'l~-~O~1?~1 '1:1,in, ~:l'~RiJ N~ 'ji-'r~p ':P
C~':li~ C'l~lnn:l~ ~N:l' ':l:l~ (9)
••• • -: - : T' : •

i'la ~~~=il; N~ .,~~ 1}7~ C;~ '7m-~~ C~'7i~

:N~:'I ,.,~~ C'''£)~, :lN~ ~~"iV'~ 'n":'1-':::l
I • : • - : ':: T: •• T : .: •• T •

3) Jer. 31.9-11 ~"7?~' i'ni?f~ C'~~i- ~"~m c;i~ m:'l'-"~1 ~:S:1?~ (lO)
 APPENDIX 113

Indeed, Jeremiah's attitude toward the nations is readily apparent

from what he himself has to say, frequently. In 2.18 he declares
scornfully:
Now why are you on the road to Egypt,
To drink the waters of the Nile?
Why are you on the road to Assyria,
To drink the waters of the Euphrates? 1)
And far from being a prophet (i.e., God's spokesman) to the nations,
Jeremiah warns his fellow Judeans (2.36):
How lightly you gad about,
Changing your way!
-----
:ii7~ i1~":p i''ttp~ ~~~fj(7 '?~,~~ i1'J!??
:~~~~ PlO ,~~ i'?l$1~ :JR~~-n~ mi1' i17~-':P (11)
In 49.20 and 50.45, C"l is either, again, purely rhetorical (as also, e.g., in 18.13)
or else is directed to the Judeans. In such a passage as 16.19,
o Lord, my strength and my stronghold,
My refuge in the day of trouble,
To You nations shall come (~~:J~ c~i~ 9'7~)
From the ends of the earth (r?l$-'l;l~~~) and say:
Mere delusion ('R~-'1~) our fathers inherited,
Folly ('?~m that can do no good.
it is naive to take the Hebrew literally, that nations will come from all over the
world ~o Jerusalem to admit that the worship of any god but Israel's can do no
good; neither Jeremiah nor his audience was that naive. All that Jeremiah meant-
and was understood to say, rhetorically, was: The whole world will recognize
God's uniqueness and omnipotence. Would scholars dare take literally such a
similar expression as (Isa. 55.12) " ... mount and hill shall break into song, And
all the trees of the field shall clap their hands"? (See on this LINDBLOM, p. 101,
and his favorable references to ROBERT H. PFEIFFER, H. H. ROWLEY, and ALFRED
GUILLAUME; cf. also DE BOER, pp. 89-90). If one wishes to take literally Jeremiah's
rhetorical declaration (2.1):
Cross over to the isles of the Kittim and see,
Send to Kedar and observe carefully,
(See if aught like this has happened:
Has any nation changed its gods?
-And they are not even gods!-... )
then he should also take literally the equally rhetorical statement in the verse
following:
Be appalled, 0 heavens, at this!
Be horrified, utterly desolate!
-declares the Lord.
1) Jer.2.18 'irnp'~ nil'ltp7 C~j~~ '1?77 '17-m~ i1~~7
:'[;9 '~ nil'ltp7 ,~W~ '1?77 17-m~~
114 H. M. ORLINSKY

You shall be put to shame by Egypt

As you were put to shame by Assyria! 1)
In 9.24-25; 10.1 ff., Jeremiah expresses outright contempt for the
heathen nations and their ways:
(24) Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will
punish all those who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised-
Egypt, Judah, Edam, the Ammonites, Moab, and all who dwell in the
desert that cut the corner of their hair; for all these are uncircumcised,
and all the House of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. 2)
(1) Hear the word which the Lord speaks to (or: concerning) you,
o House of Israel. (2) Thus says the Lord:
Learn not the ways of the nations,
Nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens
Because the nations are dismayed at them.
(3) For the customs of the peoples are false ... 3)

And the chapter is climaxed by this passage (v. 25):

Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that know You not,
And upon the peoples that invoke not Your name;
For they have devoured Jacob,
Devoured him and consumed him,
And laid waste his habitation. 4)

1) Jer.2.36 1itr:r-n~ ni~W7 ik7? '7TtI-i1~

:"WJN~
.-.': : ... -:- 'Wi:1l'1
l'11V~-"WN~ . . .C'''~~~
. - : .. C~-
2) The text (e.g., at the end of v. 24) is not in order; yet the general meaning
seems clear enough.
3) Jer. 9. --;:p (25) :i1?"')Wf. '?~~ '?:r-'?:p 'T:l'R.!t~ i11i1'-C~.9 C'~~ C'1;J~ i1m (24)
24-25; 10.1-3 -'?:r ,?:p, :1tti~-'?:p, Ti~:P '~f.-'?:p, cii~-'?:P' i1'J~i1;-'?:P' C~j;t1;J
'?~?~~ n'~-'?;r, C'7j~ c~i~jr'?;r '~ "~'7p~ C':;1~'iJ i1tt~ '~~~p
::1?-''?'''):P
mi1' "~N i1~ (2) :'?N.,iri' n'~ C:l''?:;: mi1' .,~"T .,WN ":1"Ti1-nN ~:;:~IV C1)
-T looT:'" ': .. -: .... ':-: TT- ': :'

~l'1ntJ-'?~ C~~~iJ nink~~ ~ilt7l;l-'?~ c~i~tl1}"J-'?~

:i17f1J~ c~i~tI ~l'1t1~-'~
in1f ":P~1;J r:p-'~ N~!'1 '?~(j C'7p:P:; niji'CI-'~ (3)
:i~:;:~~ W.,n-'i' i1iD:;:~
IT -: - - T T •• : •• -: -

4) Jer. 10.25 ~~:;:'J;-N'? .,~~ c~i~tI-'?:p ~J;1ltt! 1b~

~N:JR N'? ~7?~f. .,~~ nin~1p1;J '?:p,
:~~~tt ~m~-n~, ~i1~;?;) ~i17;r~) :1p~~-n~ ~'?:;>tt-,~
 APPENDIX 115

G
Among the many additional passages that might be discussed in this
connection, I may mention in passing Isa. 11.10-12:
(10) In that day,
The stock of Jesse that has remained standing
Shall become a standard to peoples:
Nations shall seek his counsel,
And his abode shall be honored.
(11) In that day, the Lord will set His hand again to redeeming the
remaining part of His people [viz., those outside the land of Israel-
Judah] from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from
Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands.
(12) He will hold up a signal to the nations
And assemble the banished of Israel;
He will gather the dispersed of Judah
From the four corners of the earth. I)

Taken out of context, as has so often been done, one might assume
that the unnamed scion of the Davidic Dynasty "shall become a
standard to peoples" (v. 10) and that He (viz., God Himself; or "he",
viz., this same scion of David) will lift up a signal to the nations"
(v. 12), in the sense that something good will come to the gentile
nations through Israel's leader and through Israel's God. However,
one has but to read these expressions in context to see how completely
nationalistic the prophet-or whoever it was who composed these
verses-is. Thus in verses 1-9 the "shoot from the stump of Jesse" will
restore justice to the land of Israel, so that "it shall be filled with
recognition of the Lord." And everything that follows v. 12-indeed
the entire section from 10.32 through 12.6, which constitutes the
Haftarah for the Eighth Day of Passover-glorifies the deliverance of

1) Isa. 11.10-12 C'I'p~ O~7 ,~~ .,W~ 'W: W')tz.i N~ilu ci'~ il;iJ' (10)
:,i:J:.l i1'lMl~ il1'l'il1 ~W.", c'i~ "~N
IT T\: T:T: .... : •• TO.

i,; 1'l'~W 'tT~ '1'9i' N~ilu ci'~ il;iJ' (11)

c:j~I'p~~ "~lV~~ "~W: .,W~ i~~ "1$~-1'l~ 1'lilR7
:c~u '~~~~ 1'l~n~~ .,~~~~~ c7'~~~ W~:.l~~ O;"J;'l!il~~
~~'f?': 'l]"H '1Q1$1 c:i~7 O~ Nif~' (12)
:f')!5iJ 1'li!:l~~ 11~ i~~ r~j(; il1~il; 1'li::;!?t~
116 H. M. ORLINSKY

Israel's exiles, the reunion of Israel and Judah, and Israel's God who
achieved it all.
To sum up. However such expressions as c:,ia ,iN7 9'l;ltl~~ and
c:,ia ,iN7 cw 1'1''''!~7 9m~' in Isaiah and 9'l;ltlt c:,ia,? N':;l~ in Jeremiah are
translated, all the contextual data in these Books make it amply clear
that nothing international was implied in them. These prophets,
God's spokesmen all, were not sent on any mission to any nation other
than their own one,l) to God's covenanted partner, Israel. When they
were not simply the means by which God punished His erring people,
the pagan peoples were merely helpless witnesses-just like the
heavens and the earth and the mountains-to God's exclusive love
and protection of His people. This is the essential meaning of such
passages as Jer. 26.6 and 4.2:
«4) Thus said the Lord:
If you will not listen to Me ... )
(6) I will make this House [of Judah] like Shiloh,
And I will make this city [Jerusalem] a curse
For all the nations of the earth.
( (1) If you return, 0 Israel,
Declares the Lord... )
(2) And if you swear "As the Lord lives"
In true justice and uprightness,
Then nations shall bless themselves in (or: through)
him [viz., Israel],
And in him they shall glory.2)
1) In my article on "The Seer in Ancient Israel" (Oriens Antiquus, 4 [1965],
153-174; written originally in 1958, and revised in 1959, for vol. II of The World
History of the Jewish People, ed. BENJAMIN MAzAR-the volume is now in its Enal
stages), I wrote (pp. 159-160), " .. .it is worth noting that since divination was a
universal craft, recognized in all countries and cultures of the ancient world, it
is not surprising that the activities of the Israelite seer sometimes ranged beyond
the Israelite population and border. Thus Elijah is said to have been ordered by
God to go to Damascus and there anoint Hazael as king of Syria-after which he
was to return to his own country and anoint Jehu as king of Israel. .. Elisha ...
Naaman ... Ahaziah ... Baal-zebub ... But one cannot imagine a canonical prophet
in Israel being consulted by a foreign power, or going to another country to address
a ruler, or to interfere with his rule, directly; or of a foreign ruler coming to
Israel to consult one of the canonical prophets"; and see n. 18 there on Jonah.
2) Jer. '~ia ~:'7;'77R7 Ttl~ I'1N~tI "lly-1'11$1 ;"i~:p ;'~tll'1:~tI-1'11$ 'M~1 (6)
26.6 and 4.2 :n~V
;'vT1~:;l~ ~'f~~~ I'1rt~f ;";"-'0 J;l~~~~' (2)
• :~~~;'I'1' i:l~ c'ia i:l ~~'::ll'1m
IT - ; • • : T : • ;
 APPENDIX 117

Le., the heathen nations shall say: May we be as prosperous and pro-
tected as Israel-if all goes well with Israel; but: Cursed shall you be
like Israel-if Israel is in degradation af the hands of God for her sins.
In a word: Israel will be "a light of nations" in the sense that
Israel will dazzle the nations with her God-given triumph and resto-
ration; the whole world will behold this single beacon that is God's
sole covenanted people. Israel will serve to the world at large as the
example of God's loyalty and omnipotence.
 CONCLUSIONS

1. Neither <ebed Adonai (YHWH)/"servant of the Lord" nor any form

of <ebedj"servant" was employed as a technical term in Second Isaiah
or-with the apparent exception of <ebed AdonaijHa-Elohim for Moses
-anywhere else in the Bible. The expression <Ebed Adonaij"Servant
of the Lord" first became a technical term in Christian circles, after the
career of Jesus on earth had come to an end, only after the significance
of the life and death of Jesus had come to be reinterpreted. Con-
sequently, the term has no special meaning in the exegesis of Second
Isaiah; its meaning, rather, belongs to the area of post-biblical
eisegesis.
2. The concepts "Suffering Servant" and "Vicarious Suffering" are
likewise post-biblical in origin (probably from a pagan, Hellenistic, not
a Judaic source), and deserve no place in the analysis of the Hebrew
Bible in its historical development. It was only after suffering-
vicarious suffering-came to be associated with Jesus that these
concepts were read back into the passage of the Hebrew Bible most
favorable for such interpretation, chapter 53 of Isaiah.
3. There is insufficient reason to isolate <ebed sections in Second
Isaiah, apart from their natural context, in the preserved Hebrew text;
no one would have thought of such procedure had not the alien, post-
biblical concept of "Servant of the Lord" been permitted to intrude
into the biblical text. Whatever the problems that the so-called <ebed
sections manifest for scholarship, they do not differ from those that
non- <ebed sections offer the unbiased and inquisitive scholar.
4. In all the four so-called <ebed sections-though the term <ebed
is not found in two of the four-it is the prophet himself who is the
central personage.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALBRIGHT, W. F., From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical
Process (Baltimore, 1940).
- - , "Hamath," Encyclopaedia Miqra'it, III (1958), 193-200.
ALTMANN, P., Erwiihlungstheologie und Universalismus in Alten Testament (Beihefte
zur ZAW, No. 92, 1964).
An American (The Chicago) Translation: The Complete Bible, rev. ed. by T. J. MEEK.
AVIGAD, N., See s. SUKENIK, E.L.
BACON, B. W., "New and Old in Jesus' Relation to John," JBL, 48 (1929), 40-81.
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120 H. M. ORLINSKY

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HOOKER, Morna D., Jesus and the Servant,' The Influence of the Servant Concept of
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122 H. M. ORLINSKY

LOEWINGER, S., "The Variants of DS II," VT, 4 (1954), 155-163.

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 INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND OTHER REFERENCES
Genesis Isaiah Isaiah
18 55 7.14 3, 74 42.10-12 33 (and n)
50.23 61 10.6 ff. 28 42.15, 18, 20 94
10.32-12.6 115 42.16-17 104
Exodus 11.10-12 115 42.17 51
7.3-5 28 13.1-14.23 12n 42.18 103
32 55 14.1-2 38 (and n), 99n 42.18 ff. 76 (and n)
14.12-16 28 42.19 18 (and n), 94, 95
Leviticus 19.18-25 40, 99n 42.19 ff. 8-9, 14
19.18 41n, 99n 22.20 7 42.22 20 (and n)
34-35 12n 42.22-25 25 (and n), 42n
Numbers 34.5 9 42.23 82
14.24 7 37.23 ff. 28 42.23-24 32
23.10 18 (and n) 40-48 12n, 14 43.1 51, 82
40-55 12n, 15, 41n 43.3 34n, 82
Deuteronomy 40-66 12n, 21 43.3-6 33 f. (and n), 45
32.15 18 (and n) 40 ff. 10, 12n 43.8 94
33.5, 26 18 (and n) 40.1-2 42 (and n), 51, 88, 43.10 14, 81, 94
108 43.14, 15, 22, 28 82
JOIhua 40.1, 9 19 f. (and n) 43.23, 24 94
1.1, 13, 15 9 40.2 24 (and n) 43.24-25 25 (and n)
8.31, 33 9 40.9-11 28 (and n) 44.1 82
11.12 9 40.10 42 (and n) 44.1, 2 14, 18n, 81, 94
12.6 (bis) 9 40.15-31 29 (and n) 44.2 18 (and n),82
13.8 9 40.17 42 (and n) 44.3 84n
14.7 9 40.27 82 44.5,6 82
18.7 9 40.28 34n 44.21 14,51,81,82,88,94
22.4, 5 9 41.1 34n 44.21-22 26 (and n)
24.29 9 41.2-3, 5 30 44.23 82, 88
41.8 51, 81 f. 44.24 51
Judges 41.8, 9 14, 94 44.26 94
2.8 9 41.8, 12-14 42 f. (and n) 44.28 8n,44, 77, 95n, 96
41.8-16 30 f. (and n) 45.1 8n, 44, 77, 95n, 96
II Samuel 41.10-12 20 (and n) 45.3 82
22.1 9 41.11-12 32 (and n) 45.4 14, 82
41.14, 16, 20 82 45.4-6 44 (and n)
I Kings 41.14-16 34n 45.11 80
11.34 8n 41.15-16 43 (and n) 45.14-17 33 ff. (and n)
14.18 7 41.17 51, 82 45.17 81, 82
15.29 7 41.21 82 45.19 82
42.1 84, 94 45.25 81, 82
II Kings 42.1 ff. 3, 12 ff., 14, 75 ff. 46.3, 6 82
14.25 7 42.2 92 46.13 81, 82
17.24 ff. 50 42.2-3 76 47.4 82
18.12 9 42.2-4 77 47.5-15 35 f. (and n)
19 35 42.6 97-117 48.1-8 26 f. (and n)
42.6 f. 72 48.1, 2,12,17 82
Isaiah 42.7 76, 77 48.12-14 45 f. (and n)
1.1 32 42.8 77, 103 (and n) 48.18 27 (and n)

Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 9

 126 H. M. ORLINSKY

Isaiah Isaiah Jeremiah

48.20 14, 47n, 82, 94 53.2-12 17n, 21 9.24, 25 114 (and n)
48.20-22 46 53.3d-5 52 10.1 112
49-51 90 53.4-5 59 10.1 if., 25 114 (and n)
49-55 14 53.4-6 53 (and n) 11.2, 4, 6, 7 112
49.1 87 53.5-6 57 f. 11.18-20 61
49.1 if. 3, 12 if., 79 if. 53.7 52 11.19 52, 56, 60
49,2, 4 85 53.7-9 59 f. (and n) 13.15 112
49.3 80-88, 94 53.7-12 62 16.19 113n
49.5-6 82, 94 53.8 58 17.20 112
49.6 72, 97-117 53.8-9 62n 18.7 112n
49.7 14, 46, 82, 94 53.9 23 (and n), 61 18.13 113n
49.8-9, 13 101 (and n), 108 53.9-10 a 23n 19.3 112
49.9-21 108f. 53.10 52,60,61 (andn),62 21.11 112
49.13, 22 a 47 53.10-12 21, 23n, 62n 22.1 if. 112
49.22-23 39 (and n) 53.11 94 25.9 7, 11
49.22 b-26 47 f. (and n) 53.12 62 25.12-14 8
49.23 48 54.2-3 SO (and n) 26.2 112
49.26 83 54.5 82 26.6 116 (and n)
SO 72 54.17 94 27 28
50.1 27 (and n) 55 44 27.6 7, 11
50.4-9 3, 12 if., 89-92 55.1-5 109n 27.21-22 8
50.5-6 92 55.3-5 109 (and n) 29.20 112
50.10 90n, 94 55.12-13 108, 113n 31.9-11 112 f.
50.11 90n 56.3-8 37 (and n), 99n 35.2 112
51 44 59.20-21 109 f. 42.15 112
51-52 21 f. 60.1-3, 5-7 109 f. 43.10 7, 11
51.1-3 90 60.1-14 104 if. 44.24, 26 112
51.4 77, 98 60.3, 5 104 49.20 113n
51.4-6, 7-8, 9-11 90 60.10-12 49 SO-51 28
51.23 44 60.11 49 50.45 113n
52.1 24, 48, 49 61.1 92, 95n
52.3 83n 61.8-9 110 Ezekiel
52.7-12 23n 61.9 109 14.14, 20 55
52.10 44 62.1 104
52.11 48, 49 63.7-64.11 22n Amos
52.12 22 (and n), 82 66.18-24 39 f. (and n), 99n 1.3-2.3 28, 41
52.13 14, 17 (and n), 18, 2.4 28
23 (and n), 63, 74, 94 Jeremiah 9.7 41 (and n), 99n
52.13-15 17 (and n), 19 1.4-6, 14-16, 17-19 111 f.
(and n), 21, 22, 23 (and n), (and n) Jonah
62, 92 2.1-2 113n 1.9 9n
52.13-53.1 21, 23 (and n) 2.1-12 111
52.13-53.12 3, 12 if., 14, 2.4 112 R aggaz.
15, 21, 22n, 52, 74, 75, 2.18 113 (and n) 223
91, 92 2.36 113 f. (and n) . 7
53 9n, 11, 17 (and n), 20 f., 4.2 116 (and n)
23,51 if., 56, 59 if., 63 if., 4.16-18 111 Zechariah
66 if., 71, 72, 73 5.15-17 111 2.14-16 38 (and n), 99n
53.1 17n, 21, 23 (and n) 5.20-21 112
53.1-8 23n 6.18-19 112 (and n) Malachi
53.1-9 21 6.22-26 111 2.10 41n,99n
53.1-12 17, 22, 23, 92-94 7.2, 22, 23 112 3.22 10
 INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND OTHER REFERENCES 127

Psalms Daniel Babylonian Talmud

2.2 95n 9.11 9, 10 Shabbat 89 a 10
18.1 9 11.33, 35; 12.3, 10 74
24 41n, 99n New Testament
36.1 9 Nehemiah Luke 22.37 72
91.16 61n 10.30 9, 10 Acts 7.52 92
8.1 ff. 93 f.
Job I Chronicles 8.32 f. 69, 72, 73 f.
4.18 95 6.34 9 13; 26 72
5.8 83n
19.27-29 62n II Chronicles
42.16-17 61 1.3 9
24.6, 9 9
Lamentations 24.20-21 56
4.13 57f. 32.16 7
 INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS
(Also of some Key Words and Phrases)

Abba Arika 10 blind (see also s. deaf) 18 (and n), 51,

Abraham (see also s. patriarchs) 8n, 76 f., 101n
9n, 10, 32n, 42, 51, 55 ba' ("enter") 49, 105n
Ackroyd, P. 70 de Boer, P. A. H. 24n, 34n, 41n, 44,
Acts 9n, 69, 72, 73 75, 98, 113n
afterlife (see s. resurrection) Bousset, W. 70
Ahab 56 bring (hiph. ba') 105n
Ahaziah 116n Brownlee, W. H. 74n
Ahijah 7 Budde, K. 18n, 86
Albright, W. F. 63 fr., 66 Bultmann, R. 70
alien (see s. nations) Burrows, M. 74
eaimah 3, 74
Altmann, P. 42n Cadbury, H. J. 3, 4, 9n, 50, 69, 70
An American Translation 67n, 110 Caleb 7
Ammon 28 captivity (see s. exile)
Amos 28, 41, 56, 90, 95n Carpenter, L. L. 70
anoint (see also s. Messiah) 8n, 95n, Casey, R. P. 70
116n Chaldea (see s. Babylon)
Apocalypses 67 chapter division 22 (and n)
apostles 72 chieftains (see s. kings)
Arameans 41 chosen people (see s. covenant)
ea fiiim (see s. far corners) Christ (see s. Jesus)
Assyria 28, 32, 35, 40 Christian(ity) 4, 9n, 10, 16, 17,59,65,
atonement 24 (and n), 52, 71 66 fr., 69, 73, 75, 78, 91, 93, 95n
Avigad, N. 23n Church (see s. Christianity and s. New
Testament)
Baal 65 coastlands 32n, 34n, 39
Baal-zebub 116n Cobb, W. H. 11
Babylon(ia) 7,24,28,32, 34n, 36, 42n, comfort (see s. Israel, people)
43, 45f., 50, 56, 64, 77 confessions 90 f.
Bacon, B. W. 67 f. consolation (see s. Israel, people)
bara' 83 (and n) conversion (see also s. nations) 37,38,
Bardtke, H. 23n 44, 47, 48, 97, 109n
Barnabas, Epistle of 71 Cook, S. A. 24n
Beer, G. 59n covenant 5,7,21,24 (and n), 27 f., 36,
bemataw (Isa. 53.9) 60 (and n) 37, 41, 42n, 43, 44, 50, 54 fr., 67,
Bentzen, A. 109n 97-117
bet of exchange 57 f. Craig, C. T. 68, 78
Bethel 56 create 83 (and n)
Bewer, J. A. 81 fr. Cross, F. M., Jr. 33n, 74, 95
biblical concepts 3, 5 Cush 33
biblical criticism (see also s. eisegesis) Cyrus 8n, 19, 32n, 44, 76n, 77, 78,
3-4 95n, 96, 102n
biblical theology (see s. biblical cri-
ticism) Damascus 28, 116n
Black, M. 64n Daniel 55, 74
Blank, S. H. 18n, 41n, 56n, 98 darkness (sit or dwell in) 76,77, 101n
 INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SUB JEeTS 129

David 7, 8, 9 (and n), 10, 109, 115 Fischel, H. A. 94n

Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah 22 f. (and Fischer, J. 17n
n) 23n, 25n, 74 (and n), 83
deaf (see also s. blind) 18n, 76
death (chiefly in re Isa. 53) 57, 60 f., ga'al 83 (and n)
65, 73 Gaster, T. H. 53
Deutero-Isaiah (see s. Second Isaiah) Gaza 28
o iHXlXwc; 72, 92 gentiles (see s. nations)
divination 116n Gerstenberger, G. 54n, 60n
Dodd, C. H. 78 Gethsemane 91
aOUAOC; (see also s. 7tocIc;) 9n Gezer Calendar 66
Driver, S. R. 12n, 59n, 61 God (see also s. covenant) 24, 36,
Duhm, B. 12 (and n), 13, 67 40 f., 42 (and n), 44, 51, 54, 65, 82,
Dupont-Sommer, A. 74 113n
Goldenson, S. H. 5
Gomorrah 55
earth 32
Goodenough, E. R. 4
'ebed (YHW H) 7, 8 (and n), 9 (and n),
Gordon, C. H. 66
10, 11, 13, 14, 68, 74, 80, 88, 90, 94-
Gospels 4, 68 f., 71, 79
96, 118
goyim 112 (and n)
'ebed Elohim 9, 10, 118
ted ("witness") 70
Gray, G. B. 40
Guillaume, A 58, 113
Edom 28,32
guilt (see s. sin)
Egypt(ians) 22, 28, 32, 33, 40, 55, 61
Ehrlich, A. B. 85, 110
eisegesis 3, 4, 10, 37, 70, 74, 83n, 91, habi' ("bring") 105n
92, 95n, 102, 104, 109, 118 haftarah 115
Eissfeldt, O. 12n, 13n, 22n, 24n, 51, Hamath 64 (and n)
70, 93n Hamlin, E. J. 34n
Eliakim 7 ha-rabbim (see s. rabbim)
Elijah 7, 56, 57n, 63, 90, 116n Haran, M. 12n, 24n, 34n
Elishah 116n von Harnack, A. 9n, 69 f.
Elliger, K. 15 Hazael 116n
emendation 51, 85, 95, 110 heathens (see s. nations)
encounter 8n heavens 32
endearment (see s. Israel, people) Hebrew 8, 9n
ends of the earth 32, 34n, 47n, lOOn pel ("wealth") 49 f.
Engnell, 1. 66 Hellenism 73, 74, 94, 118
Enslin, M. S. 4 pemah ('appo) 25n
Ephraim 61 Herod 68
eschatology 78, 79, 109 Hezekiah 7
Ethiopia 41 Hillers, D. R. 54n
evil (see s. sin) hills 34n
exegesis (see also s. eisegesis) 3, 4, 118 Hittites 54n
exile 18n, 19, 21, 22, 24, 33, 42n, 43, Hitzig, F. 86
46,50,56,58, 65n, 76n, 90, 92, 115 f. Holy City (see s. Jerusalem)
Exodus 22, 28 homeland (see s. restoration)
expiation (see s. atonement) Hooke, S. H. 53
Ezekiel 7, 55, 56, 57n, 90 Hooker, Morna D. 69n, 70, 71f., 73,
74 (and n), 95n
far corners 32 Hosea 15
Fensham, F. C. 54n humility 63 ff.
figurative language, figure of speech Hyatt, J. P. 66
(see s. poetic language) hyperbole (see s. poetic language)
130 H. M. ORLINSKY

Ibn Ezra, Abraham 60n Kedar 33

Inanna 65 kerygma 72
imprisoned (see s. Israel, people) kifldyim (Isa. 40.2) 24n
iniquities (see s. sin) kings 19,20 f., 32, 39, 44, 46, 47, 49,
innocent 51 lOOn, 105n
internationalism (see also s. nationa- kingship, divine 65
lism) 3,37,38,41,44,97-117 Kissane, E. J. 13n, 52, 59, 97, 104
Isaac (see s. patriarchs) Kittel, R. 85
Ishtar 65 Koehler, K. 57n
isles (see s. seacoasts) Koehler, L. 52, 84, 85
Israel, people 7,8 (and n), 14, 18 (and Konig, E. 13n, 59n
n), 19, 20 f., 22, 27, 28 f., 30 ff., 44, Kramer, S. N. 65
46, 50 f., 60, 62, 66, 76 (and n), 77,
81 ff., 94 ff., 97-117, 118 Lake, K. 67, 69, 70, 73, 95n
Iwry, S. 60n lamb (see s. Israel, people)
'iyyim (see s. coastlands and s. sea- Lattey, C. 52 f.
coasts) Laue, L. 17n
law, biblical 55
Jacob (see also s. patriarchs) 8, 9n, League of Nations 99
10, 81 Lemke, W. E. 11
Jacob (see also s. Israel, people) 18, levites 99n
38, 44, 46, 47, 50, 81 ff. Lidzbarski, M. 64n
Jacob ben Reuben the Qaraite 60n Liebreich, L. J. 23n
Jacobsen, T. 62n Lieder (Ebed Yahweh) 91
Jackson, F. J. Foakes 67, 69, 70, 73, Light of Nations 76, 97-117
95n Lindblom, J. 13n, 17n, 21, 52, 59n,
James, F. 41n 75, 76n, 77, 78, 80, 90, 98, 104, 109,
Janow, H. 17n 113n
J ehoiakim 56 listen (shama') 112
Jehu 116n Lindhagen, C. 18n, 75, 76n, 91
Jenni, E. 95n Lockenbacher, 60n
Jeremiah 7, 15, 52, 56, 57n, 60, 63 Loewinger, S. 23n
(and n), 75, 90, 92, 111 ff. Lowth, 60n
Jeremias, J. 8n, 68 f., 80, 90, 95n, 98 Ludlul bel nemeqi 62
Jerusalem 24n, 38n, 42, 48, 49, 50, 51, Luke 69 (and n), 72, 73, 95n
55, 90, 111 Luzzatto, S. D. 60n
Jeshurun 18 (and n)
Jesus 9n, 10, 16, 17, 59,66,67,68,69, Mandelkern, S. 8
70, 72, 74, 79, 94, 99, 118 Mark 67, 73
Jewish Publication Society Bible Trans- Marti, K. 18n
lation 60n Martini, 60n
Jezebel 56 fLOCPTU~ 70
Job 55, 61, 62 (and n), 63 martyr(dom) 56 f. (and n)
John 73 mashialp (see also s. anointed) 8n
Johnson, A. R. 83n maskilim 74
Jonah 57n, 116n Matthew 72
Jonah ben Amittai 7 Mazar, B. 116n
Joseph 61 McCarthy, D. J. 54n
Joshua 7, 9, 10 meekness 63 ff.
Judah 108, 111 f. mem (causal) 57 f.
Judah Ha-Nasi 10 Mendelsohn, 1. 7n
Mendenhall, G. E. 54n
Kaufmann, Y. 38n Meshullam 18 (and n)
 INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS 131

Messiah 8n, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 78, 95 7t'ocp6evo~(Isa. 7.14) 74
(and n), 109n paronomasia (see also s. poetic lan-
metaphor (see s. poetic language) guage) 18 (and n)
meter (of the "Songs") 14, 81, 85 Passion 70, 72, 73
methodology (see s. eisegesis) patriarchs (see also s. Abraham and s.
Micah 15 Isaac) 7, 55
Micaiah 56 Paul 69, 72, 95n
Michaelis, J. D. 80 Persia (see s. Cyrus)
mission(ary) 44, 46, 98 Pfeiffer, R. H. 62n, 113n
Mitton, C. L. 57n Pharaoh 28
Moab 28 Philip 72, 73, 93 f.
Moffat, J. (Bible Translation) 110 Philistia 32, 41
Monteith, J. 17n, 18n Phoenicia 32
Morgenstern, J. 41, 109n Pilate 68
Moses 7, 8, 9 (and n), 10, 17, 28, 55, Piper, O. A. 57n, 104
57n, 90, 93 poetic language 14, 21, 25 f., 32, 33,
Moshe Rabbenu 10 34n, 44, 47n, 48, 52, 60 f., 61, 62, 77,
Mot 65 78, 109n, 112 f.
Mount Sinai 55 poor (see s. Israel, people)
mountains 34n post-biblical (see s. eisegesis)
Mowinckel, S. 84 (and n), 85 potentates (see also s. kings) 32, lOOn
mythology 65 prayer 37, 91
priests 99n
Naaman 116n princes (see s. kings)
nation(s) 19, 20 f., 22, 24 (and n), prisoners 76, 101n
27 ff., 30 ff., 35 ff., 38 ff., 48, 50 f., 76, prophets 3, 7, 21, 52, 54n, 55, 56
88 f., 97-117 (and n), 57 (and n), 59n, 63, 76, 77,
nationalism (see also s. covenant and s. 92, 95, 111
internationalism) 28 ff., 31 f., 38 pun (see also s. poetic language) 18
(and n), 41 (and n), 42 (and n), 43, (and n)
44 f., 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 59, 61, 76, punishment (see s. sin)
97-117
Nebuchadr/nezzar 7, 8 (and n), 11, Q 67, 73
28 qefot ha-'dref (see s. ends of the earth)
needy (see s. Israel, people) Quanbeck, W. A. 90 f.
nefesh 3 quid pro quo
55
nehugim (Isa. 60.11) 49 f.
Neubauer, A. 59n ra'ah (zera'/banim) 60, 61
New Testament (see also s. Acts, Rabbenu Mosheh 10
Christ[ianity]; eisegesis; Jesus) 11, Rabbenu Ha-Qadosh 10
67, 68, 71, 78 Rabbenu Rab 10
Noah 55 rabbim 19, 22
Noahide laws 27 f. Rainey, A. F. 65
North, C. R. 12n, 13n, 14, 15, 21, Rashi 110, 112n
22n, 51, 52, 59 (and n), 63n, 68, 75, redeem (see s. restoration)
81, 83n, 85 f., 88, 91, 98 resurrection 61, 62n, 65 ff., 70
restoration 19 f., 22, 28, 36, 38, 44 ff.,
Orlinsky, H. M. 4, 5, 22n, 25n, 41n, 48, 50, 83, 92, 97-117
56 (and n), 62n, 83n, 84n, 88n, 97, Revised Standard Version 59n, 76,
99n, 116n 93, 110
rhetoric (see s. poetic language)
pagan (see also s. Hellenism) 74 Righteous Teacher 74
7t(xI~ (6eoti) 9n, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72 Roth, W. M. W. 9
132 H. M. ORLINSKY

Rowley, H. H. 13 (and n), 21, 59, spokesman (see s. prophets)

65, 67, 75, 84n, 98, 113n Staerk, W. 17n
ruafi 76 style (of Servant Songs) 14 f.
rulers (see also s. kings) 32, lOOn substitute (see s. vicarious sulfering)
Sukenik, E. L. 23n
sabbath 37, 40 Sulfering Servant 16 If., 21, 27, 59 If.,
Sabeans 33 63, 66 If., 71, 90, 92, 118
sacrifice 3, 37 Synoptics (see s. Gospels)
salvation 63n, 99n
Sanhedrin 68 Tammuz 65
Sarna, N. 62n Targum 95
scapegoat (see also s. vicarious sulfer- Temple (see also s. Jerusalem) 58
ing) 52 f. Temple Emanu-El of New York 5
Schian, M. 17n tension 8n
Schlatter, R. 4 Tetragrammaton 9n
seacoasts ('iyyim; see also s. coastlands) textual criticism 81 If., 88n
32 theology (of the Servant Sections) 14
Second Isaiah 7, 12 (and n), 13, 14, Third Isaiah 12n, 15
15, 16, 24, 35 If., 41 (and n), 42 (and tomb 60 (and n)
n), 44, 48, 62, 63 (and n), 65, 73, 92, Torah 9, 10, 47, 77
94, 118 Torrey, C. C. 9n, 13n, 18n, 21, 25n,
sections (open and closed) 22 f. 34n, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 70, 81 f., 85,
to see (seed/children) 60, 61 91 f., 95 (and n), 97
seer 116n transgression (see s. sin)
Sela 33 treaty (see s. covenant)
Sellin, E. 9n Tucker, G. M. 54n
Sennacherib 28, 35 Tyre 28
Septuagint 9n, 68, 69, 74, 84 f., 95
Servant of the Lord (see also s. 'ebed) uncircumcised (see s. nations)
3, 7, 9 (and n), 10, 11, 12 If., 17, 18, unclean (see s. nations)
41n, 44, 65n, 66 If., 71, 75 If., 95n, United Nations 99
118 universalism 38n, 40 If. (as distin-
Servant sections (see also s. Songs, guished from internationalism)
Servant) 3, 12 If., 16, 17 If., 72, 73, universe 32
75 If., 78, 90, 118 Uriah 56, 63
servitude 19
shama' 22, 112
sheep (see s. Israel, people) vassal(-king) 78
shemu'ah (Isa. 53.1) 22 (and n) de Vaux, R. 7n
shepherd 8n vicarious sulfering and atonement
sin 19,21,24 (and n), 25 If., 31 f., 36, 16 If., 27 If. (and n), 46, 50, 51 If.,
42n, 46, 50, 51, 53, 55, 58, 91, 117 54 If., 56 f. (and n), 61, 69, 71 If., 92,
Sinai 55 118
slavery 7, 44 virgin 3, 74
Smart, J. D. 17n, 21, 24n, 97 Volz, P. 78
Snaith, N. H. 13, 17n, 22n, 41n, 59n,
75, 97 Waterman, L. 59
Sodom 55 Weinfeld, M. 38n
Son of Man 67, 71 Wernberg-M011er, P. 54n
Songs, Servant (see also s. Lieder and wicked (see s. sin)
s. Servant Sections) 52, 91 womb 87
soul 3 worm (see s. Israel, people)
spirit 76 Wright, G. E. 7n, 66
 INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS 133

Yamauchi, E. M. 65 Zakir 64n

yaskil 18 (and n), 19, 74 Zechariah 7, 15, 56 (and n)
yeshuCah 99n Zephaniah 96n
Yeshurun 18 (and n) Zerubbabel 7, 84 (and n)
YHWH (see s. God) Ziegler, J. 84 (and n)
yisra'el (Isa. 49.6) 80-88 Zimmerli, W. 8n, 68, 75, 80 f., 90,
yodh (as an abbreviation of YHWH) 9n 95n, 98
Young, E. J. 66 Zion (see s. Jerusalem)
 ISAIAH 40-66
A STUDY OF THE TEACHING OF THE SECOND ISAIAH
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

BY

NORMAN H. SNAITH
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . 137
Part One: The Second Isaiah
I. Isaiah 40-55 and 60-62 139
II. The Prophet of the return 147
III. The Nationalist 154
IV. The Servant of the Lord . 166
V. Exegesis of Isaiah 40-55, 60-62 177
VI. Jesus and the Servant of the Lord. 201
Part Two: The Third Isaiah
VII. Exegesis of Chapters 56-66 . . . 219
VIII. Jerusalem from 538 BC to 397 BC 244
Index of Biblical References. . . . . . 263
 INTRODUCTION

These studies of the last twenty-seven chapters of the Book of the

Prophet Isaiah are lectures delivered as Speaker's Lecturer in Biblical
Studies in the University of Oxford in the year 1961/2. They consist
of an examination of the teaching of the Second Isaiah and of the
results of his teaching. The Second Isaiah had what is known in these
days as 'a one track mind.' He was the Prophet of the Return. He was
an intense nationalist, and he looked forward to a resurrection to
abounding prosperity and world dominion for the exiles in Babylonia.
Central in his thought was the conception of the Servant of the LORD.
This was primarily those who went into exile with the young king
Jehoiachin in 597 B.C., but the concept broadens to include all the
Babylonian exiles. One of the marked features of his presentation of
the Servant is the sudden surprise of the Servant's triumph. The
Servant is a hidden Servant.
There are two applications of this ideal of the Hidden Suffering-
but-triumphant Servant of the LORD. One is that by Jesus of Naza-
reth. I believe that Jesus deliberately modelled His life on the Servant
of the LORD. He saw Himself as the Servant: not the Suffering
Servant, but the Servant who triumphed out of his undeserved
sufferings. Not only is this conscious following of the pattern of the
Servant concerned with His passion and death and resurrection, but
with His whole ministry. This accounts for the so-called Messianic
secret, the way in which He told men 'not to make him known' and
the remarkable silences at the trials. In our view, it also explains the
nationalistic aspect of the earlier part of the Ministry.
The second application is the exclusive, nationalistic attitude of the
returned exiles, and all the unease and ultimate strife between the
Israel which returned from exile and the Israel which never left
Palestine. This culminates in a high priest murdering his brother in
the very Temple itself and the expulsion of all who could not prove
their descent from the returned exiles. Here was the establishment by
Ezra of post-exilic Judaism.
I have to thank the electors for the honour they have done me in
putting my name forward as Speaker's Lecturer, and also Professor
138 INTRODUCTION

H. H. ROWLEY for his comments and criticisms of these studies when

in manuscript form. Needless to say, I am wholly responsible for the
conclusions reached, especially when they vary from those commonly
accepted.

Thetford, NORMAN H. SNAITH

February 1965.
 PART ONE

THE SECOND ISAIAH

CHAPTER ONE

ISAIAH 40-55 AND 60-62

When we say 'The Second Isaiah', do we mean the author of

chapters 40-55 only? Or do we include any or all of chapters 56-66?
There has actually been much greater division of opinion than is
generally realised concerning the authorship of the twenty-seven
chapters 40-66. CHEYNE 1) gives long lists of examples both in syntax
and in vocabulary to show that there are two sections in 'The Book
of the Prophet Isaiah', one of which is chapters 1-39 and the other
chapters 40-66. The inference to be drawn from these lists is that
chapters 40-66 are the work of one author. There had been various
other earlier suggestions of composite authorship, culminating in that
of DUHM,2) who held that chapters 40-55 consist of the work of an
unknown prophet in Babylonia, the Second Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah).
The majority of modern scholars hold to this view. Indeed this view
is the modern orthodoxy.
It is also generally agreed that chapters 40-48 were written prior
to the fall of Babylon in 538 B.C., but not long before. This is on the
basis of such assumptions as that 46: 1 f. refer to orders given by
Nabonidus for the evacuation to a place of safety of the idol-gods of
Babylon, the fall of the city being virtually imminent. Further, if, as
most agree, the references to Cyrus in 44: 28 and 45: 1 are genuine
and not interpolations, then chapters 40-48 will be later than (say)
546 B.C., the date of Cyrus's capture of Sardis. These two datings
appear to be perfectly sound.
Chapters 40-48 and 49-55 are, then, from the same source, but
they have strong affinities with chapters 60-62. These three chapters
stand out markedly from the remainder of chapters 56-66. Indeed, we
are of the opinion that they also are from the same source; they come
from the hand of the author of chapters 40-55, the Second Isaiah.

1) Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, 1895.

2) Das Buch Jesaia, 1892.
140 N. H. SNArrH

SKINNER 1) says: 'The main features can be paralleled from chapters

49-55, and the strong resemblance to 49: 14 ff.; 51: 7 ff.; 54 would
lead naturally to its being assigned to the same author.' He is referring
to chapter 60. He continues: 'Had the chapter occupied a different
position doubt on this point would hardly arise; it could be accepted
without difficulty as a prophecy of return from exile, written in
Babylon.' He thus assumes that chapter 60 is early post-exilic. This is
partly, at least, because it follows a series of gloomy chapters such as
can scarcely be from the hand of a jubilant Babylonian Isaiah who is
full of hope for the future. But the argument is based on the assump-
tion that chapters 40-55 form one editorial whole, and that chapters
56-66 form another, but distinct, editorial whole. If, on the other hand,
we assume that chapters 40-66 form an editorial whole, then there is
no a priori reason why there should not be material in chapters 56-66
which are from the hand of the author of chapters 40-55. It is the
situation of chapters 56-59 that causes the difficulty. These are cer-
tainly of different origin from what precedes them and equally from
what follows them. The attitude of the writer is different, and so is the
content; so, indeed are the whole background and the attendant cir-
cumstances.
It is true that the return of exiles in 60: 4, 9 apparently refers to
Jews who are dispersed among the Gentiles generally. It is also true
that the ingathering of these dispersed Jews, the Diaspora, was an
object of prophetic concern and anticipation in the years following the
reestablishment of the Jewish community in Palestine in the late sixth
century B.C. But these are no reasons for assuming that 60: 4, 9 are
therefore of later date than chapters 40-55. Compare 43: 5 f.: 'I will
bring thy seed from the east, and gather them from the west; 1 will
say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back; bring my
sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the earth'. Or again,
see 41 : 9: 'Thou (Israel) whom I have taken hold of from the ends of
the earth, and called thee from the corners thereof.' To these we would
add 49: 6, which we translate: 'I will also make thee a light of Gentiles,
that my salvation may be to the end of the earth'.2) C. C. TORREY 3)
claimed that 'chapters 34-66 ... (with the exception of 36-39, which

1) Isaiah, vol. ii, Cambridge Bible (revised 1917), p. 195.

2) See p. 155. This translation entails no alteration of the text. It is merely more
accurate. I take 'light of Gentiles' (the 'to' has been inserted by the translators)
to mean 'a world-wide light' to guide every far-away Israelite home.
3) The Second Isaiah, 1928, p. 53.
 CHAPTER ONE 141

have a different origin) form a homogeneous group and are the work
of a single hand'. For a man who did not accept the historicity of any
exile in Babylonia, it is easy to see that some such statement is in-
evitable. There are certainly enough similarities between chapters
40-55 and parts of chapters 56-66 to warrant the assumption of a
common authorship. TORREY was, we hold, justified so far as chapters
60-62 are concerned, however wide of the mark he may have been in
other respects. There are many passages in 40-55 and 60-62 which
speak of the gathering of the outcasts from far way. So much is this
the case, that either TORREY is right and they all belong to a later date
and all refer to the Diaspora, or TORREY is wholly wrong and they
all belong to the closing years of the Babylonian exile. What certainly
seems to be the case is that, so far as this matter of outcasts returning
is concerned, 40-55 and 60-62 go together. Something of this was
realised by STADE 1) when he said that chapters 59 and 63-66 were by
a writer later than the author of chapters 40-55, and by CORNILL 2)
who regarded chapters 40-62 as the work of the Second Isaiah, adding
that chapters 40-48 were written by him in Babylonia.

The claim that chapters 40-55 and 60-62 have a common authorship
and origin is based on the following considerations: similarities in
style, vocabulary, a common theme of deliverance, references to a
return to Jerusalem.
60: 4. Compare 49: 18a, of which it is an exact repetition: 'Lift up
thine eyes round about, and see: they all gather themselves
together, they come to thee.' The argument is sometimes
advanced that 60: 4 must be either a gloss or the work of a
copyist or a devoted pupil. The argument is far from being
as forceful in the case of the Second Isaiah as it might be in
the case of another author. There is no rule, either in law
or in custom, against any author, modern or ancient,
repeating on occasion his own phrases and illustrations.
All of them can, and many of them do, both in written
and even more in spoken words. But the Second Isaiah
(40-55) has 'a few favourite phrases' and he 'constantly
reverts to a few fixed themes.' 3) Of these recurrent themes

1) Geschichte des Valkes Israel, 1887, S. 70n.

2) Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1891, SS. 151 f.
3) SKINNER, ap. cit., p. xxii.
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 10
142 N. H. SNAITH

'children from afar' and references to 'the isles' are perhaps

the most marked, whilst references to the return to Jeru-
salem are frequent. In the case of this particular author,
therefore, repetitions tend to confirm authorship rather
than suggest copyists. The remainder of 60: 4 has close
affinities in referring to the return with other passages
within chapters 40-55. Compare 'thy sons shall come from
afar' (60: 4) with 'bring my sons from afar' (43: 6); also
'and thy daughters shall be nursed at the side' (60: 4) with
'and they shall bring their sons in their bosom, and
thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And
kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens thy
nursing mothers' (49: 22 f.).
60: 9. 'for the isles shall wait for me' "j:" C"~ ,~: compare 51: 5
'for me the isles shall wait' "j:" C"~ ,~~.
60: 9. The verse ends with 'and for the Holy One of Israel, be-
cause he hath glorified thee,' which is exactly the end of
55: 5. Such repetitive conclusions are taken elsewhere
(e.g. the Holiness Code) as proof of a common origin.
Surely the same argument applies to this author. Also the
root ,~£) (glorify) is characteristic of the Second Isaiah;
44: 23; 49: 3; 55: 5 and 60: 7; 60: 9 (here) ; 60: 13;
60: 21; 61 : 3, eight times altogether against five elsewhere.
60: 10. 'for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had
mercy upon thee.' Compare 54: 7: 'for a small moment
have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather
thee.'
60: 13. 'the fir tree, the plane tree (,n,n, RV 'pine') and the cypress
("TV~n, RV 'box') together,' which is found exactly in
41: 19. These descriptions of a bountiful nature are in-
fluenced by the tree-gardens (heb. pardes, Zend. pairi-
daeza) of the Persian kings. Cf. Neh. 2: 8; Cant. 4: 13;
Ec. 2: 5.
60: 15. 'forsaken and hated.' See similar ideas in 49 :14; 49: 21;
54: 6; 54: 11. The words for the most part are different,
but the ideas are the same.
60: 16. 'suck the milk of the nations, and shall suck the breast of
kings.' Cf. similar ideas in 49: 23.
60: 16. 'and that thou shalt know that I the T,OR n am thy saviour,
 CHAPTER ONE 143

and thy redeemer the Mighty One of Jacob,' which is a

near repetition of 49: 26.
61: 1. 'the spirit of the LORD God is upon me.' Cf. 42: 1: I have
put my spirit upon him.' See also 48: 16.
61: 1. Note the use of the piCe! of the root "fv!!, used df announc-
ing the glad tidings of release and restoration: 40: 9; 52: 7.
61: 1. The release from exile is described under the figure of the
release of prisoners from darkness and dungeons; cf. 42: 7
and 49: 9. Compare also Ps. 107: 10-14. We prefer the
margins of RV and RSV: 'opening of eyes to them that are
bound.' The root np~ in biblical Hebrew is confined to the
opening of eyes and ears, and it is not the word for 'opening
of prison' (AV, RV, RSV). In modern Hebrew the root
means 'be wide awake, be smart.' Further, the association
of blindness and darkness is found in 49: 9, and the 'blind
eyes' of 42: 7 are those of prisoners in dungeons and those
that sit in the darkness of prison-houses. See also Ps.
107: 10.
61: 2. 'the acceptable year.' Compare 49: 8 'an acceptable time'
l'~'" See also 40: 2: 'her punishment has been accepted'
(the verb is the root iT~": RV has 'her iniquity is par-
doned').
61: 3. 'a failing spirit' CRV 'a spirit of heaviness). The root is
iTiT:>, 42: 3.
61: 4. building up the old wastes, etc.; cf. 49: 8; also 58: 12;
60: 10.
61: 6. 'the wealth of the nations.' The phrase itself is found in
60: 5 and 6. Note also the characteristic omission of the
definite article in chapters 60-62, itself a feature of chapters
40-55. In the main, the article occurs in the Hebrew in these
chapters only when it can be inserted without inserting a
consonant, i.e. with the inseparable particles. We very
rarely have the consonant he'.
61: 7. 'double' iTltV~, occurring twice. Compare 40: 2, where
C"~:> is used. Both words mean 'twice as much,' Zech.
9: 12; Job 42: 10.
61: 8. 'an everlasting covenant' C,t17 l'l'''!! with the verb l'l'1:> and
the preposition ,. Compare 55: 3. The phrase and the
idea become increasingly common in the P-tradition.
144 N. H. SNAITH

61: 11. The metaphor of seed sown and springing up is found in

42: 9; 43: 19 and especially 55: 10.
62: 4. The simile of the forsaken and deserted ;,~~!z.i CRV 'De-
solate') is found in 54: 1. See also 49: 14 if; 54: 4 f.
CHEYNE regarded 61: 1 if.; 62: 1 if.; 62: 6 if. as either
soliloquies of the Servant, or that ideal as reflected in the
mind of a later disciple.
62: 8. 'the LORD hath sworn by his right hand.' The idea of God
swearing a binding oath, which must necessarily be 'by
Himself,' is found in 45: 23; 54: 9. Compare the frequent
occurrence in Deuteronomy, much of which comes from
substantially the same time and venue as chapters 40-55,
60-62. The idea of 'the right hand of the LORD' as the
instrument by which He delivers Israel is found in Exod.
15, some Psalms, Isa. 41: 10 and here. The similar phrase
'the arm of the LORD' belongs in the main to Deuterono-
my, Jeremiah, some Psalms, and the Second Isaiah:
51: 9; 52: 10; 53: 1 and here. For the picture of the shep-
herd gathering the lambs, see 40: 11.
62: 9. 'in my holy courts' "'thp CRY, 'courts of my sanctuary').
It is not necessary to assume that this phrase as used here
involves the temple already having been rebuilt. There are
many references to the gates and walls of Jerusalem which
must belong to the period between the destruction of the
Temple and city and the time before Nehemiah managed
to rebuild the walls and set up the gates once more. Nor
need the writer have necessarily been domiciled in Palestine,
though this may possibly have been so. The reference to
firstfruits is plain, and it is plain also that the writer has
in mind the Deuteronomic rule that the firstfruits must be
eaten at Jerusalem, Dt. 12: 17 f.; 14: 23 f.; 16: 9-16. But
these verses refer to the future. The reference in v. 8 to the
enemies of Israel and foreigners eating and drinking
Israel's corn and wine does not of necessity refer to de-
predations which took place after the return, those which
Nehemiah sought to stop by rebuilding the walls. Such
depredations could belong to any period of Judaean
weakness and foreign domination, but especially to the
years following 586 B.C., when there had been no return
from Babylon of any kind.
 CHAPTER ONE 145

62: 10-12. Those who think of these chapters as belonging to the

period following the Return from Babylonia, find them-
selves in difficulty here. They have to make these verses
refer either to Jews still in Babylon or to the complete
ingathering of the Diaspora at some distant date. Much is
made of the lack of mention of the desert; but why must
any writer mention everything every time? But the desert
is not absent to the extent to which some allege. Compare
v. 10 'prepare the way of the people' with 40: 3 where the
desert is actually mentioned. See also the common use of
the word il~O~ (highway) in v. 10 and in 40: 3. If the desert
had been actually, instead of virtually mentioned in 62: 10,
the argument would then have been that it was a sure sign
of a copyist. Note also the characteristic repetition of the
opening word ":1107 (pass through), a well-known feature
of the style of the Second Isaiah: 40: 1; 51: 9; 51: 17;
52: 11 and 'I even 1', 43: 11; 43: 25; (48: 11); 48: 15;
51: 12.
62: 10. 'cast up, cast up' '~O '~O is another characteristic repetition,
as in the previous line. This 'throwing up' and 'gathering
the stones' is an aditional detail in the picture of building a
raised highway ;'~O~ across the desert.
62: 10. The lifting up of an ensign to ~N the peoples (note the
plural: it means the Gentiles) is found also in 49 :22.
The meaning is not universalist either there or here; see
p.159.
62: 11. 'proclaim', using the hiph'il of 17~TV; 45: 21; 43: 12; 48: 2;
44: 8;48: 5;48: 6;41: 26;52: 7;42: 9;42: 2;43: 9. There
are 29 cases in all of this use of this form of the verb, and 12
of them are in chapters 40-55 and 60-62.
62: 11. 'unto the end of the earth' 'r'Nil il~p. Compare 48: 20:
49: 6; 42: 10; 43: 6.
62: 11. 'behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before
him', which is exactly 40: 10.
62: 12. Once more we have the theme of the redeemed, no longer
forsaken.

We see therefore that there are many repetitions, near-repetit10nS

and similarites of style and ideas in chapters 40-55 and 60-62. We find
occasional reproductions of actual phrases and on occasion the repeti-
146 N. H. SNAI'TH

tion of a whole line. ften Othere is a repetition of words combined

with other words and phrases. Sometimes the same theme is expressed
in a closely allied but different way. We judge that all this is precisely
the same mixture, here in chapters 60-62, of repetition, near-repetition
and non-repetition, exact phrases and near-exact phrases, that we meet
with in chapters 40-55, the kind of thing we would expect to find in
anything which the writer of chapters 40-55 wrote. Our conclusion,
therefore, is that we can safely include chapters 60-62 in the writings
of the Second Isaiah.
Most scholars of modern times are of the opinion that chapters
40-48 as a whole are earlier than chapters 49-55, the first nine chapters
belonging to the period between 546 B.C and 539 B.C, and the rest
after 539 B.C The idea of chapters 40-55 being a series of detached,
separate poems is not incompatible with this.!) The idea of detached
pieces seems to be sound, but at the same time there are three distinct
sections, 40-48, 49-55 and 60-62. These three sections come from three
different periods of the unknown prophet's life and activity. Chapters
40-48 belong to the period when the hope of rescue from exile appears
after the first successes of Cyrus, especially with his capture of Sardis
in 546 B.C Chapters 49-55 belong to the period immediately following
the fall of Babylon when the release became very much more of a
probability, even approaching a certainty. Chapters 60-62 belong to
the time of waiting after the fall of Babylon, and probably towards
the end of that waiting time. After all, no one would suppose that
Babylon fell one night and that the exiles set out for Palestine early the
next morning. There must have been a measurable time between the
fall of Babylon and the movement of Jews towards Palestine, whether
under Sheshbazzar or another. The note of triumph appears inter-
mittently in the first group; it is much more pronounced in the
second group; it is positively rampant in the third group. The style
is substantially the same throughout all the nineteen chapters, except
that the ecstatic, exuberant elements are heightened in chapters 60-62.
The sense of release and future triumph becomes more pronounced
and imminent from section to section.

1) C. R. NORTH, The Second Isaiah (1964), pp. 4-12. For a discussion of 40-55 as
a series of separate poems, see pp. 166 f.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE PROPHET OF THE RETURN

The author of chapters 40-55 and 60-62, the Second Isaiah, is

generally recognised as being the Prophet of the Return, that is, of
the return of the exiles from Babylonia to Jerusalem. Most scholars,
however, go much farther than this and they find the climax of his
message in the ideal of the Servant of the LORD, usually with ex-
piatory and intercessory functions, and in universalism, by which is
meant a supra-nationalist appeal, that salvation is not for the Jews
only, but for all nations on earth. Such conclusions we believe to be
wrong. The Return is not merely one of the themes of these sixteen
(eighteen) chapters, to be outshone by world-wide humanitarian
ideals. It is the prophet's dominant theme. It is true that the prophet
invests this return with idealist splendour, and it is also true that the
ideal of the Servant is involved in it, but basically the Return is this
prophet's ONE theme, and all else is subservient to it.
Many writers regard the idea and theme of the Servant of the
LORD as being the great and outstanding contribution of these
chapters, whether the conception be thought to be that of the Second
Isaiah himself or that of another, whether predecessor or successor. I)
For many, the very mention of the Second Isaiah sets them thinking
forthwith of the Servant. Or if they think also of the Return, the
thought-sequence is Prophet-Return-Servant. This is wrong: it should
be Prophet-Servant-Return. The climax for him was the Return. The
emphasis on the idea of the Servant as the climax of the prophet's
thinking appears to be due mostly to Christian interpretations of
Isaiah 53 as a preview of the Passion and Death of Christ. We hold
that everything in these chapters is definitely subservient to the Return
from Babylon and the Restoration of the nation. There is another
thought-sequence, found more often among modern Jews but some-
thing of it also among modern Christians: Prophet-Monotheism-
Humanitarianism (segak8t), as forming the basis of a world culture
and religion. We hold this also to be wrong. The prophet certainly
is a monotheist, and in him also monotheism becomes for the first

1) Some scholars regard the so-called Servant Songs as interpolations into the
'main body' of the work.
148 N. H. SNAITH

time clear and definite and unadulterated. But, important as this

contribution undoubtedly is, it is secondary. The one theme is the
Return, and all else is brought in by means of emphasising and de-
monstrating the certainty of this.
The difference between this point of view and the usual universalist-
humanitarian-expiatory point of view can be shown in the translation
of Isaiah 53. Compare the translation usually offered (EVV and
elsewhere) with the following translation of v. 12:

Therefore 1-will-give-him-a-share among-the-great -ones,

And-with-the-strong-ones he-shall-share the-spoil;
In-return-for being-his-stripped-naked to-death,
and-he-was-numbered with-the-rebels.
For-it-was-he that-bore the-punishment-of-the-great-ones,
And-with-reference-to-the-rebels it-was-caused-to-light (on him).

Notes on Isaiah 53: 12.

C':l" can mean either 'the many' or 'the great.' The verse consists
of three synthetic couplets, and C"~'~17 in the other half of this couplet
certainly means 'the strong ones.' The whole point of the chapter is
that the apparently weak and despised slave will in the end share the
spoils of victory with the great and the strong.
il'17il is the hiph(il of il.,17 (be naked, bare), and the construction is
impersonal, cf. English 'one', French on, German man. Similarly for
17'l£:)' at the end of the verse. For 'hi~ (or 'his life': W£:)l with suffix)
being stripped bare, poured out' as meaning 'death,' see Ps. 141: 8.
But here the picture may even be that of the dead of the defeated being
stripped bare as they lay on the battlefield.
C'17W£:) definitely does not mean 'transgressors.' The word means
'rebels.' It is the word characteristically used by the prophets of sinners
as rebels against God. It is part of their general attitude whereby sin is
not a transgression of the law so much as a rebellion against God.
Further, the noun 17W£:) represents sin in its most serious aspect:
Job 34: 37, 'he addeth rebellion 17W£:) to his sin rlNtm.'
N,m is emphatic: 'for it was he who': cf. v. 5. This emphatic use
of the copula with a preposition or a noun is frequent in this chapter,
because the author is concerned with the amazing contrast between
the former and the latter state of the Servant, and his wholly unex-
pected victory. The point is that it was he who met with disaster and
it was undeserved. The punishment which he suffered was that which
ought to have fallen on the guilty rebels. It was caused to light
on him instead: cf. v. 6 where this same hiph'il of 17l£:) is used. This
17'l£:)' is usually interpreted to mean 'interceded for,' but this is reading
into the verb a different meaning from that in v. 6. We find here no
 CHAPTER TWO 149

thought of 'interceding for' the rebels, and no vicarious suffering in

the sense that the Servant suffered in order to save the rebels. The writer
is stating the plain fact that the Servant did not deserve the suffering
and disaster, and because he did not deserve it, it must necessarily be
the case that he will prosper and triumph. The writer is not interested
in the fate of the Gentile rebels, but he is convinced that the law of
rewards and retribution still holds. The Servant, so to speak, got in
the way of the proper retribution which was properly falling upon the
guilty rebels. It was not in accordance with the proper ordering of
things, and when things are worked out fully the triumph of the Ser-
vant must come to pass.

Many writers have emphasised the prophet's insistence on the

uniqueness of the God of Israel, and his strong emphasis on a true
monotheism.!) As in the case of the Servant, this theme is certainly
an important element in what the prophet has to say. Also, in both
cases his words have borne a greater and a richer fruit than he could
possibly have expected. It is also clear that here at last the monotheism
of Israel is stated firmly and plainly. Nevertheless, this theme also is
subservient to the declaration of the coming Return. To put all this
another way. The prophet did not set out to state his doctrine of the
Servant, nor did he set out to write a treatise on monotheism. He
had neither subject on his list of primary objectives. He had but one
theme on this list: the Return. His task was to convince the Judean
exiles that the return was certain and that it was increasingly imminent.
He had to open their blind eyes and make them see this. The prophet's
insistence on the uniqueness of the God of Israel is his main con-
fidence in the Return. This is why he emphasises God's incomparable
majesty and power, and His effectiveness against the ineptitude of the
idols of Babylon. But the Return is not proof of the unique power and
might of God. Rather, the unique power and might of the ONE
GOD is the guarantee of the Return. The prophet begins with the
Return; he ends with it; he deals with it all the time in between.
Everything in the nineteen chapters has to do with it, and everything
is subordinate to it. This is his theme: the Return from the Babylonian
exile, involving the resurrection as from the dead of the old Israel,
and the resurgence as from a new birth of a new Israel.
Not only does the prophet speak of the Return, but he is full
of immediate instancy. He is vigorous, he is urgent; he cannot

1) For an essay on the existence and development of monotheism in early times,

see 'The Advent of Monotheism in Israel', The Annual of the Leeds Universiry
OrientalSociery, vol. V, pp. 100-113.
150 N. H. SNAITH

wait. It is true that the prophets in general are speaking on the eve
of great events. Indeed, it is usually a time of crisis 1) that stings them
into speech and action, and imbues them with a zeal and urgency that
will not be denied. Their words which have come down to us have
something to say in a special and divine way for men of every age and
for us now, but their primary intention was to speak to the people of
their own times. Perhaps this was their only intention; indeed, this is
more likely than not. But they were speaking greater truths than they
knew. However this may be, the prophets, without exception, were
urgent in their message. If one is to write an account of the message
of any prophet, the first heading should be 'The Time is at Hand.'
This sense of immediacy is perhaps most apparent in the Second
Isaiah. He is essentially the prophet in a hurry. With him, as with the
writers of the apocalypses, it is a case of 'immediately, if not sooner.'
The literary style of the Second Isaiah is one of hurrying, of rushing
tumultuously on. This atmosphere of hurry is enhanced by the
frequent use of the 3: 2 metre which he uses, with the pattern abc
b'c' and the alternative abc: c'b'. For example:
Bring my-sons from-afar
and-my-daughters from-the-end-of-the earth. 43: 6.

which is abc: b'c'; and

Who-gave for-a-spoil Jacob,
And-Israel to-robbers. 42: 24.
which is abc: c'b'. This metre is known as the qinah metre, because
its use was first remarked by BUDDE as being found in laments and
elegies. But it is the lyric metre: see the Song of Songs. It is true that
the metre has what has been called 'a halting effect' and that it is used
to produce or to express an atmosphere suitable for mourning, but in
essence it is expressive of emotion, and in the writings of the Second
Isaiah it has the effect of a man stumbling because he cannot go
quickly enough. He appears to be in such a hurry that he had not the
time to complete the full 3: 3 couplet. He rushes on and in so doing
manages to catch only a passing echo of the first line.
As an illustration of this, we discuss in detail the first couplet of his
writings, 40: 1 and 2a. Here the decisiveness, the thoroughness and

1) Nowhere is the fact that 'crisis' is the Greek word for 'judgment' is more apt
than in the messages of the prophet s.
 CHAPTER TWO 151

the speedy effectiveness of the LORD's work in releasing His people

is apparent. We consider the first two words in each line of the couplet.
The opening words of 40: 1 are 'comfort ye, comfort ye' '~Ml '~Ml.
Apart from the characteristic repetition of an opening imperative
which arises out of the prophet's sense of urgency, it is important
from our point of view to realise clearly the precise meaning of this
root eMl. Especially it is important to understand that this root does
not mean 'comfort' in the ordinary modern use of the word-soothing
words which may help in the midst of sorrow and trouble which
continue, something to help the sufferer to continue to bear the pain
and sorrow. It has little to do with any hope that is merely tentative,
however pious and devoted. It has little to do with any betterment
which may happen, or even with the preliminary stages of what is go-
ing to happen. The word involves a complete, a definite and a decisive
change. As used here, especially when it is repeated, the word is part
of the vocabulary of a confident, urgent, resurgent nationalist. For the
nationalist element in this prophet's writings, see pp. 154 ff.; here we
are concerned with the author's frame of mind-this vigorously
religious, joyously triumphant Zionist of the sixth century B.C. Of
all the prophets, this man is the prototype of the devoted, enthusiastic
Israeli of today.
The Second Isaiah is called the Prophet of Comfort chiefly because
of these opening words, 'comfort ye, comfort ye'. Further, Isa.
40: 1-26 is the Haftarah (Reading from the Prophets) in the synagogu-
es for the Sabbath Va-ethchanan (Deut. 3: 23-7: 11). It is the first of
the seven Haftarahs of Consolation which follow the Fast of Ab.
The Sabbath itself is called Nachamu because of the use of this passage
as the Haftarah for this particular Sabbath. But the root eMl does not
mean 'comfort in sorrow.' It means 'comfort out oj sorrow', make an
effective end of all tears and woe. For evidence for this, see two articles
in The Expository Times, the first by D. WINTON THOMAS, 'A Note on
the Hebrew root em' (xlix, January 1933; p. 191) and the second by
N. H. SNAITH (lvii, November 1945; pp. 477 ff.). The first article
begins with the Arabic na!;ama (breathe hard, pantingly: of a horse),
and D. W. THOMAS shows that the connexion of this root with the
idea of comfort is through the idea of the relief obtained by taking a
deep breath. See Isa. 1: 24, 'I will ease me of my advesaries'; Ezek.
5: 13 refers to the relief which comes when anger is appeased; Job
16: 2 does not refer to 'miserable comforters,' but to 'breathers out
of trouble.' The Syriac na!;am means 'make to breathe, resuscitate and
152 N. H. SNAITH

quicken the dead,' because the word really means 'breathe again' and
'breathe deeply.' Thus noubama in Syriac means 'resurrection,' the idea
being that of the dead being once more supplied with breath. In the
second article, the main emphasis is that the meaning 'comfort'
does not come through ideas of pity, compassion and the like, but
through the idea of changing the mind. It is not as 'patently absurd'
as Professor JAMES BARR thinks 1) to suppose that the origin of a word
has considerable influence on its subsequent usage. It is comparatively
common for a word to retain something of its earlier meaning side by
side with a developed meaning: e.g. the English words 'peculiar,'
'quick,' 'frank.' Thus Jer. 15: 6 is 'I am weary with changing my
mind' CRY, repenting), i.e. weary of stepping in so as to change the
normal sequence of sin and its punishment. See also Exod. 13: 17;
1 Sam. 15: 29, etc., In the Old Testament the word rarely means
'sympathise with in sorrow,' but rather 'comfort out of sorrow' and
make an end of it, Gen. 24: 67. It involves effective comfort, the
drying of tears once and for all because all has changed. Isa. 40: 1 says
that such effective, convincing words are to be spoken as to ensure that
Jerusalem's tears shall cease forthwith. All is conviction. The action is
immediate.
The same conviction and urgent immediacy is to be seen in the
first phrase of v. 2. This phrase is CAY, RV) 'speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem,' or RSV 'speak tenderly.' The Hebrew is ~~ ~17 "~"T,
lit. speak to the heart. LEVY 2) refers to 'sympathetic speech.' This is
because the commentaries say that the phrase is used of courtship,
Gen. 34: 3; Judg. 19: 3; Hos. 2: 16 (Eng. 14). But there is an error
here. The association is not with tender words and soft sentimental
speech, though these may well be involved. The reference is to effec-
tive, successful courtship. There are other cases of the use of the phrase
where courtship is not involved, but what is involved is the idea of
conviction. Ruth 2: 13 is near-courtship. In 2 Chr. 32: 6 Hezekiah
speaks to the captains and instils courage into them against Senna-
cherib. In 2 Chr. 30: 22 he speaks with similar effect to the Levites.
In 2 Sam. 19: 8 (Eng. 7) J oab speaks in such fashion as to shock David
out of his inaction following the death of Absalom. There was nothing

1) The Semantics of Biblical Literature, 1961, p. 171. It is he that uses the word
'decisive'. BARR has rightly drawn attention to the danger of being influenced too
much by the etymology of a word, but he frequently exaggerates the statements of
those he attacks.
2) Deutero-Isaiah, 1952, p. 113.
 CHAPTER TWO 153

tender or sympathetic in Joab's attitude. It was plain, brutal speech,

the exact opposite of honeyed, sympathetic words. So also in Gen.
50: 21 Joseph speaks straightly and plainly to his brothers and shakes
them out of their fear of him. Further, against the RSV rendering,
the heart is not particularly the seat of the emotions, and certainly not
exclusively so. The heart is the seat of thought and knowledge,
memory, will and everything else. It is the innermost core of a
man's being, the seat of conviction.!) Thus 'speak to the heart' is a
strong phrase used to describe speech which leads to immediate con-
viction. It is our 'change of heart.'
There are three instances where cm (comfort) and .:1" "37 '.:1i
(speak to the heart) are used in parallel lines: Gen. 50: 21 E; Ruth
2: 13; and here in Isa. 40: 1, 2a. The Syriac in Isa. 40: 2 expresses the
idea of complete satisfaction, lit. 'fill the heart.' This is the Peshitta
rendering also at John 11: 19 for 7tocpOCfLu8eofLocI, which is used by
Symmachus for cm in Isa. 40: 2 and by LXX at 2 Mace. 15: 9.

1) BROWN, DRIVER and BRIGGS, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testa-
ment, 1907, in loco
 CHAPTER THREE

THE NATIONALIST

It is usually stated that the Second Isaiah is the great universalist:

that is, his message and his promises extend to all mankind on a fully
liberal scale, and he looks forward to the spread of Israel's faith
throughout all the world. LEVY 1) writes of this hope of the prophet
of 'seeing Yahweh's religion prevalent over the whole world.' He
says (p. 23) that 'later, Israel chose not to emphasise' this universal
spirit, but that 'once roused (it) never died, though often it had to
fight for its existence:' which, all things considered, is a very generous
description of the exclusive Judaism of the fifth and fourth centuries
B.C., and, indeed, of the spirit of the Jerusalem 'hierarchy' which very
nearly wrecked Christianity at the start, Acts 15; Gal. 1-2.
But statements like this of REUBEN LEVY'S are typical of the general
opinion. Scholars find in the work of the Second Isaiah the beginnings
of what is called missionary enterprise. Actually, the beginnings of
this world-wide religion are to be found in Ezekiel, though even there
the thought is still nationalistic. It comes in the realisation that if
God's people cannot come to Him in their need, He can come to them.
The idea that God is to be found only in the centralised temple at
Jerusalem breaks down under the need of God's people. When
Isaiah of Jerusalem saw the throne of God, he saw it fixed and firm,
immovable (Isa. 6), but Ezekiel did not see it that way. He saw (Ezek.
1) a chariot which had wheels within wheels, so fixed that each wheel
could run east and west or south and north, the inner wheel being at
right-angles to the outer wheel. Beside the wheels there were living
creatures with wings, and these winged creatures could lift into the
air the whole concern. The chariot was completely mobile, and could
travel over land, and fly over any mountain or sea. Above the chariot
there was a platform CRY, firmament), and on this there was the
throne of God. Ezekiel 9:3; 10:4; 10:19; 11:23 and 10:20 with
chapter 1, tell the story of God's reluctance to leave His ancient home,
but indicate also the stern necessity. In Isa. 49: 20 the crowding is at
Jerusalem, and in 54: 2 the lengthening of the tent cords and the

1) op. cit. p. 23.

 CHAPTER THREE 155

strengthening of the stakes is also in Jerusalem. The Second Isaiah

thinks in terms of bringing the people back to Jerusalem.
There are three exceptions to the general opinion that the Second
Isaiah was a universalist. They are N. H. SNAITH,I) P. A. H. DE BOER,2)
and R. MARTIN-AcHARD. 3) To these we may in part add J. LIND-
BLOM,4) who agrees that the Second Isaiah was nationalist at first, but
was universalist after 539 B.C.
The picture of the Second Isaiah as a universalist is considerably
enhanced, and for many largely influenced by the usual translation of
C"l .,'N in 49: 6 as 'a light to the Gentiles.' 5) The usual translation is
(RV): I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest
be my salvation (margin: 'that my salvation may be') unto the end of
the earth.' Largely on the basis of this, other passages are interpreted
and translated as being universalist in intention and content. Without
this particular translation of 49: 6, the universal element in the Second
Isaiah is much more meagre than many realise. There are many
passages which, if they are translated as though this particular render-
ing of Isa. 49: 6 never existed, are capable of a very different interpre-
tation.
A strict translation of 49: 6 is: It is far too small a thing for you to
be servant to me to restore the tribes of Jacob and to bring back
the preserved of Israel. I will set you as a light of Gentiles for my
salvation to be to the end of the earth.' The verse contains five sec-
tions, of which the last four form two couplets. Thus, like 43: 5 (for
instance), the first section is without its parallel. 'Restore the tribes of
Jacob' is parallel to 'bring back the preserved of Israel.' This is
satisfactory. Both phrases refer to the Babylonian exiles. There are
many cases where 'Jacob' and 'Israel' are in parallel and have this
significance: 40: 27; 41: 8; 41: 14; 43: 1; etc., and especially 49: 5 'to
bring back Jacob to him, and that Israel be gathered to him.' In the
second couplet, the parallelism is 'a light of Gentiles' and 'for my
salvation to be to the end of the earth (RVm),' that is, a light through-

1) 'The Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaiah' in T. H. ROBINSON Festschrift,

Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, 1950, pp. 187-200.
2) Second Isaiah's Message (Oudtestamentische Studien, Deel XI), 1956.
3) Israel et les nations: la perspective missionaire de l' Ancien Testament, 1959. English
translation, A Light to the Nations, 1962.
4) Prophecy in Ancient Israel, 1963, p. 428.
5) What is written here in this chapter is largely a development of what was
first put forward in the above-mentioned essay in the T. H. ROBINSON Festschrift
156 N. H. SNAITH

out all the gentile 1) world, in order that God's salvation ofIsrael-the
the salvation with which the prophet is elsewhere concerned-may
reach the end of the world. That this world-wide salvation is God's
salvation of Israel can be seen from 43: 6: 'bring my sons from far,
and my daughters from the end of the earth.' Or again: 'whom I have
taken hold of 1'J1j?TMn from the ends of the earth, and from its corners
I have called thee,' where the previous verse makes it clear that the
reference is to Israel, God's servant, to Jacob whom God has chosen,
and to 'my lover' Abraham's seed.
The phrase 'a world-wide light' (49: 6, RV 'a light to the Gentiles')
is found also in 42: 6, but not in Codex B of LXX, nor in the original
hand of N. The first corrector of N has 'a covenant of my people to a
light of Gentiles' yevou~ [LOU d~ q>w~ Hlvwv, though other correctors
and other MSS do not have 'my.' There seems to be no sound reason
for regarding 'for a light of Gentiles' as an interpolation in 42: 6.
The structure of the verse demands the inclusion of the phrase in
spite of its omission by two leading LXX manuscripts. On the other
hand, the Hebrew text of 49: 6 is probably right as against LXX (all
major MSS except codex A; Q has it in the margin) in omitting
o!.) J1'''~~ (for a covenant of the people) as a gloss from 42: 6.
DE BOER 2) interprets 'light of (to the) Gentiles' to mean that the
renewed people will be set as a light, openly seen and respected among
the nations. 'Everyone who sees the redemption of the Judean
people, even great nations, kings and princes, will be astonished and
will respect it as a wonderful salvation.' Similarly, MARTIN-AcHARD
says: 3) 'the shining of the light of the Servant... does not necessarily
mean something like the evangelisation of the Hellenistic world in the
first century of the Chritian era.' Or again (p. 30), 'the heathen will
learn of the redemption of the People of Israel; the salvation that
Yahweh will have given His people will be praised to the ends of the
earth.' MARTIN-A CHARD does not see in the Second Isaiah any
missionary message in the ordinary sense of the term, and no pro-
selytism. Israel is not called to go out to the Gentiles nor actively in
anyway to win them. Rather, and at most, Israel through the salvation
which God has wrought for them and through their loyalty to Him
will be such a dazzling light shining throughout the world, that the
Gentiles will come in humble, subservient awe. 'The heathen, now

1) There is nothing in the Hebrew equivalent to the preposition 'to.'

2) op. cit. p. 92.
3) op. cit. (Eng. tr.), p. 28.
 CHAPTER THREE 157

subdued, will give Him the glory that is due to His name (p. 30).'
Both these scholars realise that the Second Isaiah is truly nationalist,
and that he is concerned with the salvation of Israel. Both realise
that he is not interested in the Gentiles as such, and that any place
they may have in the new economy will be entirely subservient,
definitely second-class citizens, if indeed anything more than slaves.
I still prefer my original idea, that the Servant is to be a world-wide
light to guide all scattered Israelites home; but the idea of the Gentiles
as ultimately second-class citizens, if at all, is right. On the other hand
in 51: 4 DE BOER's explanation has much to commend it: the phrase
'to be a light of the peoples' (c'~17 "N': note the plural) refers to the
promulgation of the Lord's judgment (i.e. the declaration of His will
in human experience: ~!jw~) shining out among the nations.
The phrase C17 l1"~, usually translated 'a covenant of the people,'
42: 6; 49: 8, constitutes another problem. The fact that the definite
article is not found is of no account. The Second Isaiah does not
normally use the definite article. There are two cases where the word
C17 is found in our chapters with the definite article he'. The first is
40: 7, which is a gloss (see below). The other is 62: 10 where the
article is intended to belong to 'way' rather than to 'people'.
The Hebrew in 42: 6 has C17 in the singular. The Second Isaiah is
consistent about this. When he uses the singular, he means Israel, the
People of God, the true People of God. When he uses the plural, he
means mankind generally, the Gentiles. For the plural (five times),
see 49: 22; 51: 4; (56: 7) and 61: 9; 62: 10. There are twenty-five
instances of the singular, with and without the suffix. In every case
except two, 42: 5 and 40: 7, the reference is to Israel. Sometimes it
means the Servant and sometimes it is distinct from the Servant.1)
The case of 40: 7 is as clear a case of a gloss as one could find. The
gloss is 'surely the people is grass,' and it means mankind as distinct
from God Himself. LXX and the Old Latin omit the verse, and it is
outside the scheme of versification. With respect to 42: 5, the meaning
there is mankind as a whole, and it is difficult to see how else the pro-
phet could have said what he wanted to say.
In 42: 6 and 49: 8 the Servant is called C17 l1"~ 'a covenant of the
people.' He is to be the means by which God's people is to be in-
tegrated, bound together once more. Various suggestions have

1) For an explanation of how this can be, see pp. 172 f.

Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV II
158 N. H. SNAITH

been made as to the meaning here of the word Tl',:l.1) The meaning
could be 'mediator of my covenant with,' 2) though NORTH under-
stands 'people' to mean all the Gentiles, interpreting the passage in a
fully universalist sense. We think that here the word Tl',:l retains
something of its original meaning: the root ;',:l means 'bind to-
gether.'3) The Servant is to bind together the old Israel, and this to
make them once more the People of God, the new People of God.
There is, in our view, no possibility of 42: 7 referring to the
Gentiles. 'Blind eyes' (v. 7) means the exiles in Babylonia. Blindness
and imprisonment in dungeons are frequent metaphors for this
captivity. DE BOER 4) refers to KISSANE as saying that here we have a
figurative description of the conversion of the nations, but there is
no need to pick out KISSANE particularly. This interpretation is
common; it is the orthodox one. As MARTIN-AcHARD points out,5)
the interpretation which makes C:s7 mean 'mankind' here and so the
Gentiles generally 'is specifically based on the parallelism which is
found in 42: 6 between C:s7 Tl',:1 and C"l ,,~l;l.' But this latter phrase
('light of Gentiles') is disputed. Many hold it to be a gloss here, and
in 49: 6, from where it is repeated, we hold that a nationalistic inter-
pretation is to be accepted. The Servant's mission, we maintain, is to
release the captives from Babylon, to bring the scattered Israelites
back to Jerusalem and there to establish a restored community, the
New Israel. His task is limited to this. 'There is no question of a
message, starting off from one point and swarming off in the whole
world ... (all is) relative to the experience of the exile .. .' 6) The phrase
'covenant of the people' has nothing to do with the Gentiles, but
everything to do with the People of God. SKINNER 7) agrees with this,
in spite of his general attitude whereby he regards the Second Isaiah
as a universalist. He says 'C:s7 (people) can hardly be understood of
humanity at large (even if that were a possible use of the word),
because in 49: 8 the phrase is applied exclusively to the Servant's

1) See especially MARTIN ACHARD, op. cit, p. 26. note 12, and more recently,
C. R. NORTH, op. cit., p. 11. He thinks the phrase is an addition in 49: 8.
2) NORTH, op. cit., p. 112.
3) See VAN DER PLOEG, Les Chants du Serviteur delahve, 1936, pp. 30 if, where he
cites VASCARI and VOLZ. Also DE BOER, op. cit., pp. 92 if. and MARTIN-AcHARD,
op. cit., pp. 26 if.
4) op. cit., p. 93.
5) op. cit., p. 27, note 12.
6) DE BOER, op. cit., p. 100. See also MARTIN-AcIIARD, op. cit., pp. 27 if.
7) op. cit., p. 32.
 CHAP'TER 'THREE 159

mission to Israel.' This is indeed plain in 49: 8, as we interpret it.

The Lord has called and chosen His Servant to raise up and restore
Jacob-Israel (v. 6) and thus God's salvation will reach to the end of
the earth. Or, if it be held that v. 8 is in a different context from v. 6,
it is stated in v. 8 that being 'a covenant of the people' means reesta-
blishing the land and causing the ruined properties 1) to be occupied
once more. This refers to a desolated Jerusalem, and it is to the released
prisoners (i.e. the returning exiles) that the prophet is speaking.
Again, the returning inhabitants are 'from far,' from north and west
and from the land of Sinim, but these are not the Gentiles. These are
'his people' and 'his afllicted' (v. 13). Yet again, there is no justification
for assuming that the overcrowding of vv. 19 f. is due to an immigra-
tion of Gentiles. It is due to the many scattered children coming back
home again. The Gentiles do not appear until v. 22. They do indeed
come to a restored Jerusalem (vv. 22-26), but it is to carry Jerusalem's
sons and daughters as slaves carry the children of their masters. The
kings and queens of the Gentiles are to serve as attendants on the
returning Israelites. They are to be Israel's nursemaids, and they will
bow low before the Israelites as the most abject of slaves: 'bow down
with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of thy feet' (v. 23). It is
then that Israel will know for certain that the LORD is their God. This
will be because of the subservience and humiliation of the Gentiles.
They will know from actual experience that those who trust in the
God of Israel will be triumphant at last. The captives of the warrior
shall be snatched from him and Israel's children shall be saved. The
chapter closes with v. 26, one of the most bloodthirsty and revengeful
verses in the Old Testament. If the Second Isaiah is the great univer-
salist that many allege, meaning by this one who welcomes the Gentiles
on something at least approaching equal terms, something more than
a 'benevolent colonialism,' then either he has fallen very short of his
great ideals, or we must say that this verse belongs to a later time, say,
the times of Nehemiah and Ezra.
The nationalist, even anti-Gentile, attitude is plain in 43: 3 f. Here
the LORD is the Saviour of Israel and He will hand over Egypt,
Ethiopia and Seba for Israel. There can be no doubt but that here
.,£)~ means 'the price of ransom for a life,' Job 33: 24; 36: 18; Exod.
21: 30; etc. The next verse clinches the matter: 'Because you are
precious in my eyes, you are of great value, and I prefer 2) you above
1) ;"m means 'property' rather than 'inheritance'.
2) ::mN here means 'preferential love,' Gen. 29; 30, 31; Deut. 21: 15.
160 N. H. SNAITH

all others; and I will give men in return for you and peoples in ex-
change for you.' That is, God is prepared to sacrifice the Gentile
peoples for the sake of Israel. I ) He will deliver them into slavery in
order to release Israel from exile and bondage. There is nothing uni-
versalist here. It is as narrowly nationalistic as the narrowest and most
fervent of modern nationalists could desire. There are times when the
Old Testament reaches no higher than many in this modern world.
As we have already pointed out, one of the main barriers to the
proper understanding of the nationalistic attitude of the Second
Isaiah is that the English Versions have been produced under strong
universalist influence. An example of this is 45: 19-25. According to
SKINNER,2) who here is typical of most, here is 'a salvation as universal
as it is eternal.' This statement is made in spite of the fact that the
word of the prophet is addressed to those 'that are escaped of the
nations' (20), and that the concluding verse (25) is 'in the LORD shall
all the seed of Israel triumph 3) and shall boast.' SKINNER and others
are influenced by v. 22: 'Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of
the earth,' which they interpret to mean all mankind, all the Gentiles,
and to involve the open arms of modern missionary zeal. But 'all the
ends of the earth' is far from involving the Gentiles in any liberal
open-handed fashion. See above (p. 156) and the discussion of 43: 6
and 41 :9. 'The ends of the earth' is where the Israelites are, where
'my sons' and 'my daughters' are, where 'Israel, my servant' is, and
'Jacob whom I have chosen.' The phrase is a lyrical geographical
exaggeration. Also, as we shall see (p. 161) the nationalistic attitude
is plain to see in 52: 13-15. The great ones were astonished, appalled at
the Servant because he was so bedraggled and miserable. But he is no
longer the slave of rulers. The tables have been turned. Now, great
nations will leap to their feet to honour him, and kings will clasp their
hands over their mouths. They will never have heard anything like
this, and they will be forced to take particular notice of it. This new
unheard of thing is the revival and triumph of Israel after a disaster
so apparently final and complete.

1) Cf. DE BOER, op. cit., p. 12. We are not discussing whether, then or now,
nationalism is better than internationalism, or whether any degree of national
feeling is right. We are not discussing whether the Second Isaiah was right for
his own time or for any other time. We are seeking to find out what the Second
Isaiah actually meant.
2) op. cit., p. 71.
3) so DE BOER. See also N. H. SNAITH, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament,
1944, p. 87. This is much better than the 'be justified' of EVV.
 CHAPTER THREE 161

We have translated in' (v. 15; AV, RV 'sprinkle'; RVm, RSV

'startle', but RSVm says that the meaning is uncertain) as 'make
leap to their feet.' Formerly there was general agreement that the root
is ilTl I (spurt, spatter: in the hiph'il, sprinkle). This root in the hiph'il
is used in the Priestly Tradition with a ritual meaning associated with
cleansing rites from ritual uncleanness. I) It is natural that many should
read 'sprinkle' here in 52: 15, especially if they have certain views of
the atoning value of the death of Christ, interpret chapter 53 in this
way and make use of the temple ritual for disposing of ritual unclean-
ness. Thus we have the explanation offered that just as the nations
formerly shunned the Servant as being unclean, so now he will sprinkle
them and cleanse them. Something of this seems to be the basis of
the English Versions and of some ancient versions also. It is com-
bined also with the underlying assumption that the Servant's mission
is to all mankind. The alternative was to assume another root iHl II
(c.f. Arabic 'spring up, leap up'), and this gave rise to the translation
'startle' (R V m, RSV). This rendering is supported by the idea of
astonishment which is plain in the context; and LXX has eWjfL&croV"t"(J(~.
But this second root does not really mean 'startle,' and some critics
have pointed out that 'startle' is a long way from the Arabic 'leap up.'
This is why there is doubt expressed in RSVm. 'Startle' could be
justified as a legitimate extension of the original idea; there have been
many stranger developments than this. There is, however, a better
suggestion, namely the original 'leap up,' and this is what we are
proposing to read. The argument is as follows: the first half of the
verse is a parallel couplet. In the other half of the couplet we have
(as it is usually translated) 'shut their mouths.' But compare Job
29: 8 f.: 'The young men saw me and hid themselves, And the aged
rose and stood. The princes refrained from talking, And laid their
hand on their mouth.' Here are two ways of showing the utmost and
most reverential respect. One way is to rise to one's feet, the more
quickly, the better. The other way is to be silent, close one's mouth
and clasp it with one's hand. This is what we have in Isa. 52: 15. The
word in' means 'cause them to leap to their feet.' No change is in-
volved in the Hebrew, neither of consonants or of vowels. Further,
the root ftli' in the next half-line does not mean merely 'shut their
mouths,' but 'place the hand over the mouth and clutch it, grasp it
in the closed hand,' cf. Deut. 15: 7. The verse therefore describes the

v.,T
1) e.g. Lev. 5: 9, etc, but not such passages as Lev. 1: 5 where 'sprinkle' is
definitely wrong. The root there is (toss), cf. RSV 'throw.'
162 N. H. SNAITH

amazement of the Gentiles, both nations and kings, at the triumph of

the Servant, especially since it involved the complete subservience of
these same nations and kings.
In 54: 2 we find that those returning will have exceeded all ex-
pectations so far as numbers are concerned. After having done
everything possible to secure the necessary living space, the returned
inhabitants will spread in all directions and their descendants will
dispossess the Gentiles. This root w,' (v. 3: possess, dispossess, in-
herit, disinherit) is the verb regularly used in the story of the conquest
of Canaan, where it involves the driving out of the original Canaanites
and taking possession of their land: Josh. 18: 3 and often in Deutero-
nomy and Joshua. DE BOER 1) has 'expel', and this is not by any
means too strong a word. It is not universalism, nor anything like it.
It is the Joshua invasion all over again, for much of Deuteronomy
and virtually all of the Second Isaiah is a second occupation of Canaan.
Just as in Deuteronomy, Moses is speaking to the second invaders of
Palestine, so here the prophet is speaking to an Israel that once more
is to cross over into the land, possess it and conquer the Gentiles.
Ultimately the LORD will be called the God of the whole earth, and
this will be when His people have become dominant in it. In the end
Jerusalem will be supreme. No weapon formed to be used against her
will be effective, and no one will be able to stand against her with
weapon or tongue in any assault or accusation. 'This is the heritage of
the servants of the LORD and their victory (triumph, vindication)
which is from me,' 54: 17. All men will run to Israel, and David's
successor will be prince and commander of the peoples, 55: 4. God's
word will certainly triumph.
In the three extra chapters 60-62 the note of triumph at the expense
of and over the Gentiles is clearest of all. Chapter 60 is full of national
triumph. All the wealth of the nations is to come to J erusalem. Verse
12 condemens to extinction the nations and the kingdoms which
refuse to serve Israel. Duhm and others object to this verse. This is a
natural attitude for all those who have made up their minds that the
Second Isaiah and his friends are universalists. Chapter 61 begins by
declaring that the Spirit of the LORD is upon the speaker (the
Servant), and the purpose is to release the captives and bring new
prosperity to Zion. In v. 6 the inhabitants of Zion are to 'eat the
wealth of the nations.' The rest of the three chapters breathes the same

1) op. cit., p. 36.

 CHAPTER THREE 163

general air of triumph and the acknowledgement of this by the

Gentiles.
We turn to the assumed references to Cyrus in 41 : 2 f. and 46: 11.
It is generally maintained that 41: 2 f. refers to Cyrus. The adjectives
used are 'unquestionable,' 'obvious,' 'no further argument' -all of
which create suspicion. In ordinary daily life and discussion, the use
of the word 'obvious' is taken by the wise as a sure sign that what is
being said is anything but obvious. It is not altogether different
with what is written. The Targum and ancient Jewish authorities did
not find it obvious. They saw here a reference to Abraham (cf.
51: 1-3). What 'obvious' means is that a reference to Cyrus is obvious
to a writer who has certain assumptions deeply seated in his own
mind. These assumptions involve universalism and a belief that
there is a general unity of all the material outside the four so-called
servant songs. But if we establish from other passages the existence
of a nationalist prophet who is looking forward to Israel's victory and
triumph over the Gentiles, and if we can show that we have separate
pieces everywhere and no 'main body' of prohecy, then the identifica-
tion with Cyrus in 41: 2 f. is neither obvious nor necessary. Why
should Cyrus be intended here, when elsewhere we have the picture
of a militant, triumphant, exultant Israel marching home to Jerusalem?
It is extremely unlikely that anyone would think of Cyrus here unless
he had first the notion of an Israel that is generous and kindly to all
the Gentiles, and had previously read 45: 1 f. A more natural ex-
planation is that the 'one from the east' roused 1) by the Lord to be a
conqueror of kings is the new Israel: cf. 53: 12; 52: 15; 49: 23. Com-
pare the similar phraseology of 41: 25 f., another passage which is
often interpreted to refer to the victories of Cyrus. Here the difficulty
is of 'one that calleth on my name' (41: 25). It is true that in 45: 3 f.
the LORD speaks to Cyrus through the prophet and says, '(I have)
called thee my name,' but this is a very different thing from saying
that Cyrus has called on the name of the LORD, especially when,
according to 45: 4 and again in 45: 5, it is said with particular emphasis
that Cyrus did not know the LORD. The ancient Jewish identification
with Abraham is worthy of consideration in view of 51: 1-3. Abraham
was but one when God called him, but God blessed him and made
him many. The inference in 51: 1-3 is that God will also call Israel,
the new Israel, will call him as once He called Abraham, will make

1) The Hebrew is ":11, not Nivl, nor the hiph'iI of C'i'.

164 N. H. SNAITH

him many, restore him to Zion and make that city a veritable Garden
of God. Abraham was called from Ur of the Chaldees in ancient time;
Israel is called from Babylonia in this latter time. Israel is the 'one
from the east' who has been roused, and victory meets him at every
step, cf. Gen. 30: 30. The LORD who roused him, enables him to
subdue nations and kings, and his sword and bow make them like
dust and wind-driven chaff.!) He pursues them and passes safely on by
the path on foot. 2) Verse 5 and 6 may well be a continuation of the
fear and trembling of the Gentiles, with 'they drew near and came'
as an addition (also outside the metrical scheme), and v. 7 a mistaken
explanation of the help which each gave the other. It seems to us,
therefore, to be a much more likely explanation of 41: 1-5 that it
refers to a triumphant Israel roused by God to new endeavour and
marching proudly to victory.
Who is the "":\7 (bird of prey) 'from the east', 46: 11? Most agree
that it is Cyrus, but it could at least equally be a triumphant Israel,
swooping down in victory. Similarly for the phrase in the same verse:
'the man who executes my counsel,' i.e. brings my plans to fruition.
This again could be Cyrus, given the necessary assumptions, but
assuming the idea of a triumphant, militant Israel, it is once again
more likely to be a reference to that triumphant, victorious Israel.
Turning to 42: 1-4, it is customary to see here a special meaning for
"!)!D~ (AV, RV 'judgment') analogous to the use of the Arabic din,
which can mean 'true religion'. The Arabic usage arises from the idea
of a man's fate being wholly in the hand of Allah (kismet, and so
forth), and from the idea of submission to the will of God. The
Hebrew usage (if it is correct) would arise from the idea that sound
custom and the will of God are one. But if we assume that the Second
Isaiah is an intensely nationalist prophet, then "!)!D~ means 'justice,' 3)
here meaning the verdict in the sense of a penalty of strict retribution.
The Servant is a wick now burning dimly, but in the future he will
not burn dimly, nor will he continue to be a bruised reed. He will
establish justice in the earth. This is the true meaning of "!)!D~. It is
God's justice as shown in history and experience; cf. the Queen's
justice, which is our English law, based on precedent and custom.
1) The exact reading of the Hebrew is uncertain. Read either (with LXX) 'he
makes their sword as dust' or 'his sword makes them as dust.' The sense, however,
is clear, whatever the precise construction is.
2) The phrase N'::I. N' (he doth not come, hath not come, will not come) is
not in LXX and is outside the metrical scheme.
3) See Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, p. 193. RSV has 'justice.'
 CHAPTER THREE 165

Again,!) it is true that the Hebrew root ,n' (end of v. 4) most often
means 'wait expectantly' rather than 'wait with dread,' but the mean-
ing 'hope' tends to be late and the 'aphee! of the corresponding
Syriac root means 'despair.'
This use of ~ctzj~ meaning 'judgment, justice' occurs again in
51: 4-6. The message is spoken to 'my people:' 2)

For a law il"l'l shall go forth from my presence

For my judgment ~ctzj~ shall be 'a light of peoples.'
I will suddenly bring near :l"PN 17'l'N my victory,
My salvation shall go forth like the light
And my arms shall judge the peoples.
For me the isles shall tarry
And for my arm they shall wait.
Then there follows a verse of terror, and the inhabitants of the
earth are dying like gnats (reading C'~~ for l~-thus). Also, 'like the
light' does not refer to a steady and continuous illumination, but to
the sudden blazing forth of the light of a new day (see p.176). Further,
'the isles' C"N means 'the Gentiles.' 3)

1) Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, p. 143.

2) This is '~17 and '~'N'. See 42: 3, the other case of ~Ctzj~ meaning 'justice':
most read there 1'l"'tt7(peoples) instead of 1'l'-?~7 (in truth).
3) BROWN, DRIVER and BRIGGS, in loco
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE SERVANT OF THE LORD

There is no need here to give a summary of the many and varied
attempts to identify the Servant of the LORD. This was done ad-
mirably a generation ago by A. S. PEAKE,!) and even more comprehen-
sivley in recent years by C. R. NORTH. 2) This latter volume is most
detailed, and every view of importance is discussed. The bibliography
is both accurate and extensive. We proceed, therefore, to discuss the
identity of the Servant of the LORD with the discussions in Professor
NORTH'S book as a background. An outline of this present discussion
has already appeared in 'The Servant of the LORD in Deutero-
Isaiah,' Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, 1950, pp. 187-200, and a
preliminary article appeared in The Expository Times, lvi (December
1944), pp. 79-81, entitled 'The So-called Servant Songs.'
In the first place, we maintain that the Servant of the so-called
Servant Songs (42: 1-4; 49: 1-6; 50: 4-9; 52: 13-53: 12) is the Servant
of the remainder of the nineteen chapters, 40-55 and 60-62. As was
pointed out in the two above-mentioned essays, the existence of the
four Servant Songs as distinct pieces involved their separation from
'the main body of the prophecy.' 3) Very few have argued against
such segregation,4) and few have realised any need for discussion.
The position here maintained is that there is no such 'main body of the
prophecy.' The modern attitude is to think of all four of the Latter
Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve) as 'collections of
independent and usually short orcales, poems and the like.' 5) This
movement began with H. GRESSMANN 6) who found 49 pieces in
Isaiah 40-55, and these wholly independent of each other. He has been
followed by KOHLER (70 pieces), MOWINCKEL (45), VOLZ (54),
OESTERLEY and ROBINSON (54), EISSFELDT (about 50), BEGRICH (70),
and CASPARI (many pieces from many authors). MOWINCKEL and

1) The Servant of Yahweh, etc., 1931.

2) The Suffering Servant in Detttero-Isaiah, 1948.
3) SKINNER, Isaiah, vol. ii, pp. 238 f.
4) BUDDE (1922), GIESEBRECHT (1902), MARTI (1900), KISSANE (1943) and
Roman Catholic scholars generally.
5) O. EISSFELDT, 'The Literature of Israel: Modern Criticism' in Record and
Revelation, ed. H. WHEELER ROBINSON, 1938, p. 94.
6) 'Die literarische Analyse Deutero-jesajas,' ZATW 34 (1914), SS. 254-297.
 CHAPTER FOUR 167

VOLZ exclude the Servant Songs from their count.!) More recently,
J. MUILENBURG 2) has written in favour of twenty-one separate poems.
If there is no main body of the prophecy, there can be no special
group of pieces distinct from it. We are faced with approximately
fifty separate pieces, in some of which reference is made to the Servant
of the LORD. These references are of varying definiteness, but there
are four where the association is particularly plain. These are -the
pieces which B. DUHM picked out and called Die EbedJahve-Leider. 3 )
These he isolated from the rest, and most scholars have followed him
in this. But some scholars include other pieces also, and even DUHM
himself varied. The fact is that the four pieces cannot be identified as
markedly and definitely as DUHM first proposed. NORTH, for instance,4)
speaks of 'Secondary Servant Songs:' 42: 5-9; 49: 7-9a or 49: 7-12;
and 50: 10 f. It has been said that 42: 5-9 is a continuation of 42: 1-4,
and later DUHM agreed to this, but in doing so he said that these latter
verses were so similar in style to the style of the Second Isaiah that
he had at first ascribed them to him instead of associating them with
the author of the Servant Songs, whom DUHM distinguished from the
Second Isaiah. If DUHM could make such a 'mistake,' it is evident that
the style of the Servant Songs does not differ from the style of what is
called 'the main body of the prophecy' to anything like the degree
which some have maintained. Often arguments depending upon style
are far too subjective, but here we accept DUHM'S second opinion: the
style is for the most part indistinguishable.
We do not agree that 42: 5-9 forms one piece with 42: 1-4. Verses
5-9 undoubtedly refer to the Servant, but he is not specifically men-
tioned. Further, v. 5 begins with 'Thus saith the El, the LORD,' 5)
which GRESSMANN held to be an important criterion for the detection
of a new piece. In 42: 1-4 the Servant is referred to in the third person,
but in 42: 5-9 he is himself addressed in the second person. Again, in
the first piece the message is for all who will listen and is in general
terms. In the second piece the message is precise and specific. The
word ruab is used in different senses in the two pieces. In the first
piece, the reference is to the Spirit of God which inspires the Servant

1) For further details, see C. R. NORTH, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah

pp. 158 ff.
B) The Interpreter's Bible, vol. 5 (1956), pp. 389-392. )
3) 42: 1-4; 49: 1-6; 50: 4-9; 52: 13-53: 12. See Die Theologie der Propheten (1875
and again his commentary Das Buch Jesaia ubersetzst und erklart (1892).
4) op. cit., pp. 189 ff.
5) LXX reverses these titles.
168 N. H. SNAITH

and enables him to conclude his mission effectively. In the second

piece, it is the breath which God gives to all men, the breath by which
man lives. DUHM was right originally. 42: 1-4 and 42: 5-9 are separate
pieces.
Similarly, we hold that DUHM was right originally in holding that
49: 1-6 is distinct and separate from 49: 7-12. In the first piece the
Servant is speaking, but in the second piece the speaker is the LORD
Himself. Notice also that v. 7 and v. 8 both begin with 'Thus saith
the LORD.' Does this mean that v. 7 also is a separate piece, distinct
from both 49: 1-6 and 49: 8-12? Certainly in v. 7, God is speaking
about the Servant, whereas in v. 8 He is speaking directly to him.
The difficulty about v. 7 is instanced by the fact that CONDAMIN (1910)
makes the first piece end with v. 7 and not with v. 6. Evidently he
connected v. 7 with what follows it rather than with what precedes it.
Yet again, there is difference of opinion as to whether the second
(? third) piece ends at v. 9a or continues to v. 11 or even to v. 12.
Turning to 50: 4-9, LEY (1893) and LAUE (1928) held that this piece
is not a Servant Song, and VOLZ (1932) hesitated. The rhythm is
different, and there is a higher proportion of unusual words. NORTH 1)
examines the vocabulary very carefully, and comes to the conclusion
that, whilst there are differences, 'there are sufficient correspondences
with Deutero-Isaiah to make it hazardous, on grounds of vocabulary
alone, to deny his authorship.' This makes 50: 4-9 a Servant Song,
since NORTH holds that all four Servant Songs are by the Second
Isaiah. But what of v. 10, which has a definite reference to the Servant?
The Servant is here referred to in the third person; in the first nine
verses it is the Servant himself who is speaking. Later, DUHM added
vss. 10 and 11 to the song. He was right originally. 50: 1-9 is one
piece; 50: 10 f. is another piece.
The last of the four so-called Servant Songs is 52: 13-53: 12.
Here again there are differences of the same type as those which
scholars have discussed in these other pieces. In 52: 13-15 the LORD
is speaking, but in 53: 1-11 the speaker is not the LORD, though
apparently he is the speaker once more in 53: 11 band 12. But who
is speaking in 53: 1? If 52: 13-53: 12 is a unit, then it is the kings of
the Gentiles who are speaking in 53: 1. But this creates a difficulty in
53: 8, where '~y (my people) occurs, since 'my people' (the singular)
usually means, in some sense, Israel. Some therefore read C'~Y (the

1) op. dt., pp. 164 £1'.

 CHAPTER FOUR 169

plural), whilst others read 'l17tt.i~r.l (because of our rebellions) for 17tt.i~r.l
'r.l17 (because of the rebellion of my people). This, it must be noticed,
changes the content of the piece, and makes the suffering of the servant
to be vicarious on behalf of the Gentiles. We take 52: 13-15 to be
spoken by the Gentile kings, and chapter 53, certainly as far as v. 11a
to be spoken by the prophet himself, which 'my people' means Israel
in some sense.
There are other pieces within chapters 40-55 and 60-62 which
scholars have sought to include among the Servant Songs. These are
61: 1-3, because of its contents, and 61: 4-6, because of its unmistake-
able connexion with 42: 1-4. There are also 41: 8ff.; 44: 1-5; and
44: 21-23. Further, there are those pieces which NORTH 1) refers to
as 'the Secondary Servant-Songs': 49: 7-9a (13); 42: 5-9; 50: 10 f.;
42: 19-21; 48: 14-16; 51: 4-(6) 8; 51: 9 (12)-16; 61: 1 ff. There has
also been hesitation as to whether 50: 4-9 ought to be included among
the Servant Songs. The very fact that other pieces can be described
as 'secondary Servant Songs,' especially by such a careful and accurate
scholar as C. R. NORTH, shows that the Four cannot be isolated as
decisively as is often supposed, whether on grounds of metre, or
literary style, or vocabulary or content. DUHM himself varied his
opinion in two cases, and he admitted, certainly in one case, that the
style is not distinguishable. Scholars have varied as to the number of
these songs. If we count all which have been proposed, the number is
sixteen.
Our conclusion is: It is reasonable to maintain that in Isaiah 40-55
and 60-62 we have between 50 and 60 separate pieces. If we were to
place these pieces in a long line so that those which have nothing to
do with the Servant of the LORD are on the left, and those which have
most to do with the Servant are on the right: if also we try to place
them in order according to the emphasis on the Servant, then we
shall have DUHM'S original Four Servant-songs on the extreme right,
and next to them the so-called Secondary Servant Songs, one of which
is within the three chapters 60-62. To the left of these will come the
extra three songs, 41: 8 ff.; 44: 1-5; 44: 21-23; and so on. There is no
'main body' of the work. There are no Servant-songs in any ex-
clusive sense. We have a whole series of pieces, in which, as we move
from left to right, the Servant motif becomes increasingly manifest.
If there are no distinct and separate Servant-songs, then the Servant

1) op. cit., pp. 127 ff, 189 ff.

170 N. H. SNAITH

of the so-called Songs is the Servant of the rest of the book. Who
then is the Servant of the LORD? Our suggestion is that the Servant
of the LORD in Isaiah 40-55, 60-62 is the first batch of exiles, those
who went into captivity with the young king Jehoiachin in 597 B.C.,
together with a tendency to include also the 586 B.C. exiles. Ulti-
mately, all the exiles in Babylonian are the true People of God, and it
is they who are to return to Jerusalem and restore the situation, but
with increased prestige and in the end with world-wide success. 1)
The prophet Jeremiah divided the people of Judah into two
distinct groups. First, there were those who went into exile with
the young king Jeconiah (Jehoiachin), 2 Kgs. 24: 8-17. Those who
went at that time consisted of 'all the princes, and all the mighty men
of valour, even to ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and
smiths; none remained save the poorest sort of the people of the land'
(v. 14). These who were taken to Babylon, said Jeremiah, were 'very
good figs, like figs that are first ripe.' Those that were left behind in
Jerusalem he called 'very bad figs, which could not be eaten, they were
so bad,' Jer. 24: 2. He continued by saying that the good figs were
taken to Babylon 'for good,' and that 'they shall be my people, and I
will be their God; for they shall return to me with their whole heart,'
Jer. 24: 5-7. He said of Zedekiah and of those who remained behind
in Jerusalem that 'the residue (shall be) consumed off the land that I
gave to them and to their fathers,' J er. 24: 10.
It is usually held that Ezekiel began his ministry in Palestine in
592 B.C., and probably (so BERTHoLET) was taken away captive to
exile with the second deportation in 586 B.C. However this may be,
Ezekiel refers (11: 20) to those who went into exile in 597 B.C. and
says of them that they 'shall be my people, and I will be their God.'
He says this because a contention has arisen concerning this very
matter. It is the first sign of that dispute which led ultimately to the
rift between Jew and Samaritan. The inhabitants of Jerusalem have
said to the rest, to those who have been 'removed ... far off among the
Gentiles' that they are 'far from the LORD,' and that God has given
to them (that is, those who have remained in Jerusalem) this land
for a possession, 11: 15. These exiles are far way from the Temple,

1) These suggestions were first put forward in the essay mentioned above,
'The Servant of the LORD in Deutero-Isaiah,' Studies in Old Testament Prophecy,
pp. 187-200. C. R. NORTH (op. cit.) has examined the history of the attempts at
the identification of this figure, and there is no need here to give an account of
these studies.
 CHAPTER FOUR 171

the only place where properly, since the introduction of the Deutero-
nomic reforms, the LORD could be worshipped. The exiles therefore
are indeed 'far from the LORD,' but, says the prophet, the LORD has
become for them for a little while a Sanctuary in the lands whither
they have gone. Thus they will no longer be 'far from the LORD.'
This promise of the Presence of the LORD is fulfiilled in Ezek. 9: 3;
10: 4; 10: 19; 11 : 23: with the consummation in chapter 1.1) These tell
the story of God's reluctance to leave the Temple of His choice,
the place where He chose to set his Name. The glory of the LORD
mounts up from upon the cherub where it has been and comes to the
threshhold of the house, that is, the outer door of Solomon's Temple.
Then the chariot-throne of the LORD with the cherubim (the 'living
creatures' of chapter 1) mounts aloft, but stays at the door of the east
gate (10: 19). It makes a third halt 'upon the mountain which is on
the east side of the city,' 11: 23. And finally the prophet sees the living
creatures, the chariot-throne, and the vision of the glory of the LORD
beside the river Chebar, 10: 22, 23; and chapter 1. The reluctant God
leaves Mount Zion, whose gates He loves more than all the dwellings
of Jacob (Ps. 87: 2), and flies across the deserts to the river Chebar
where His true people are. This is the way in which 'he became a
sanctuary for them for a little,' Ezek. 11: 16. As we have said, where
God's people are, there is He. If they cannot come to Him, He can
come to them. His people are in Babylon, not in Jerusalem, 'for a
little,' and that is why He must be there. 2)
And so the LORD goes to Babylonia to be a sanctuary to His
people who are there. These exiles in Babylonia will be given a new
heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 11: 19), but those left behind in J erusa-
lem are whole-heartedly following detestable idols and abominations,
Ezek. 11: 12 and chapter 5. They are doomed to complete destruction;
they are a 'rebellious house,' 2: 6; 5: 1-4; etc. But for the People of
God there is a resurrection. These, the exiles, are those who said,
'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off,'
37: 11. These bones, the dried bones that filled the valley, 'are the
whole house of Israel.' God calls them 'my people' and He will raise

1) see p. 154.
2) The most likely date for chapter 1 is soon after the fall of the city and the
destruction of the Temple. So SELLIN and BERTHOLET. When else would the LORD
leave Mount Zion? One answer is, because it has been destroyed. A better answer
is the true People of God can no longer come to Him there. See also 'The Dates
in Ezekiel,' Expository Times, lix, 12 (September 1948), pp. 315 ff.
172 N. H. SNAlTH

them to new life, put His spirit in them and place them in their own
land, 37: 12-14.
In Ezek. 17: 22-24 we have the parable of the tenderest twig on the
topmost of the new growth. This tenderest twig will be cropped off
and will be planted 'in the mountain of the height of Israel,' where
it will grow into a goodly cedar. This tenderest twig is the young
captive king Jehoiachin, unless the whole of the newly reborn People
of God is intended.
Thus we see that both Jeremiah and Ezekiel believe the true
People of God to be the exiles in Babylonia, and more specifically
the 597 B.C. exiles. The first break in the dark clouds came with the
release on parole of King Jehoiachin in 561 B.C. by Evil-Merodach
king of Babylon, 2 Kings 25: 27-30,1) Here was the beginning of the
fulfilment of the promise, and it was probably this event which gave
the second editor of Kings courage and hope to deal with the appalling
problem created by the untimely death of king Josiah. If ever a king
should have lived long and prospered gloriously it was King Josiah,
the true pattern of all that a Deuteronomic king should be. 2)
But the prophets found it impossible to confine the privilege of
being the People of God to the 597 B.C. exiles only. Both in Jeremiah
30 and 31 and in Ezekiel 37, the People of God includes all the exiles
in Babylon, all who are described as being scattered exiles 'from the
uttermost parts of the earth,' Jer. 31: 8.
When we turn to post-exilic times and to the work of the Chronicler,
we find the same attitude. Those who have been in exile in Babylonia
are the People of God. Those who stayed behind in Palestine, 'the
people of the land,' are not the People of God. These latter are con-
trasted with the 'people of Judah,' who are the returned exiles (Ezra
4: 4) and they try to weaken their hands. They are 'the adversaries of
Judah and Benjamin' (Ezra 4: 1), who, as the Chronicler believed,
went to all lengths to frustrate the returned exiles in their purpose of
1) For the cuneiform account of the details of this king's 'continual allowance',
see W. J. MARTIN, 'The Jehoiachin Tablets' in Documents form Old Testament
Times, ed. by D. WINTON THOMAS, 1958, pp. 84-86.
2) See I and II Kings, The Interpreter's Bible, vol. 3 (1954), pp. 10 f., where it is
argued that the original edition of Kings ended with the word 'Moses' in 2 Kgs.
23: 25, and that this first edition was written not long before the death of Josiah,
when he was at the flood tide of his success. It is difficult to see how any editor
could have written as he did, if Josiah, by a comparatively early death, had falsified
all his theories. Nothing which involved Deuteronomic ideals could easily have
been written between the death of Josiah in 609 B.C. and some such event as
the easing of the conditions of Jehoiachin's exile.
 CHAPTER FOUR 173

rebuilding the Temple. These adversaries claimed to be worshippers

of God equally with the returned 'children of the captivity,' but
Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest, for whatever reason, did not
allow them to have anything to do with the rebuilding, and that, so
the records say, was when the trouble started.
Thus the returned exiles sought to establish themselves, and
themselves only, in Jerusalem as the People of God. It is for this
purpose that we have the genealogies and lists of the Chronicler:
1 Chr. 1-8; Ezra 2 and 8; Nehemah 7; 10: 1-28; 12: 1-26, together
with the list of those who put away their 'foreign wives' (EVV
'strange wives'), the women whom they had married from 'the
peoples of the land,' Ezra 10: 2. Anyone who was to be recognised as a
priest in the post-exilic community had to be able to point to his
family name in the priestly genealogies. If the name was not there, he
was put out from the priesthood, Ezra 2: 62. There were priestly
families whose names were in the lists, but who had not been to
Babylon, but that is another story and was the result of a compromise. 1)
The genealogies were lists of the People of God. If a man's name was
not in the list, then he was one of 'the people of the land' f'Nil ell; it is
probable that here we have the origin of this term, used later on to
mean 'the outsiders,' the people outside the law, those who did not
observe the ritual rules of cleanness.
Thus when the founders of Judaism limited the People of God
to 'the children of the captivity,' they were translating into fact the
words and promises of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Our claim is that the
Second Isaiah fits into this pattern and is in this succession. He is the
link between Jeremiah and Ezekiel on the one hand and the post-
exilic returned exiles on the other hand, those who sought to establish
themselves as the sole People of God, the story of whose struggle and
success is to be found in the writings of the Chronicler, his history
of the establishment of Judaism. From the Second Isaiah, in fact,
there came an added edge of exclusiveness.
In the next chapter we seek to show the truth of this contention
and the soundness of the identification of the Servant of the LORD,
and this by dealing in detail with the various pieces of chapters 40-55
and 60-62.
It is on this basis that we would explain Isaiah 48: 1-11, a section
with which the commentators have found very considerable difficulty.

1) See below, pp. 228.

Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 12
174 N. H. SNAITH

Some scholars have ascribed all the strictures of this piece to an editor,
holding that this kind of thing is not at all like the Second Isaiah. So
DUHM, CHEYNE, MARTI and others. The most recent commentators
accept the section as from the Second Isaiah.1) The assumption is that
here as elsewhere the prophet is speaking to the exiles, and that there-
fore he is accusing them, or at least some of them, of all these abomi-
nations. 'the critics naturally find this difficult to accept, and so an
alternative is that he is speaking to the Israel of history, the people
which has been so prone to idolatry and such like waywardness all
through the years. The writer is rightly compared with Ezekiel, but
when Ezekiel is making these accusations, he is castigating the people
who are still in Jerusalem. And so it is in Isaiah 48: 1-11. The prophet
is attacking the non-exiles. They call themselves by the name of
Israel. They have come forth 'from the bowels 2) of' Judah. They
make their oaths in the Name of the LORD, and they commemorate
the God of Israel, 'but not in truth, nor in righteousness' (end of v. 1).
They say that they belong to the Holy City and they rely upon the
God of Israel. 'this is the content of verses 1 and 2. Some comment-
ators (DuHM, etc.) hold that the whole of these two verses after
'Jacob' is an addition, and so also the strictures of verses 4, 8-10 and
11. If half a section is excised, it is not surprising that a different con-
clusion is reached from that which appears on the surface. An ex-
planation which demands such wholesale excision is surely suspect.
As the section stands, it refers to people whose claim to be the true
Israel-Jacob is strongly denied. They are a people who claim that the
Holy City is their's. Presumably this is a group actually resident in
Jerusalem. They are the inhabitants of the city who were not deported
either in 597 B.C. or in 586 B.C. They are 'the rebellious house' of
Ezekiel; the 'bad figs' of Jeremiah; they are 'the people of the land'
of the Chronicler. The claim of the author of 48: 1-11, which is the
basis of all his strictures, is that exiled Israel is the People of God.
This is the theme of the Second Isaiah. His nationalism has an ex-
clusiveness which would deny even those who are of the same blood.

1) C. R. NORTH, Isaiah 40-55 (TORCH Commentaries, 1952), pp. 101 f.; The
Second Isaiah, 1964, pp. 174-179.
2) The Hebrew has ,~~, (and from the waters of). LXX omits. The Targum
has 'seed', probably interpreting euphemistically. Most read '~I?~~ (and from the
bowels of). Possibly the Hebrew is sound after all, the meaning being that they
claim to have survived the waters which have engulfed and overwhelmed Judah,
i.e. the Babylonian invasion.
 CHApTER FOUR 175

The nation, the People of God, is composed only of the exiles in

Babylon. See further, pp. 148 f.
Thus the post-exilic 'reformers,' those whose work culminated
in the 'reforms' of Nehemiah and Ezra, were following a tradition,
a principle already established. It began with Jeremiah, though he
was one of the last persons in the world to desire that anything he
said should even begin to establish the kind of exclusiveness which
characterised post-exilic Jewry. It continued in Ezekiel. It becomes
specific in Isaiah 48: 1-11 with its absolute denial that those who were
still living in Jerusalem were to be reckoned among the People of
God. This Israel of the exiles, this Servant of the LORD of the
Second Isaiah develops into 'the children of the captivity,' and the
obstinate ones of Isaiah 48: 4 who wrongly claim to be true worship-
pers of God become 'the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin' of
Ezra 4: 1.
Our proposition is therefore: The Servant of the LORD is primarily
the 597 exiles, but gradually it tends to widen in conception to include
all the Babylonian exiles. Those remaining in Jerusalem are definitely
not the People of God. This situation is found first in Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. It crystallises in the Second Isaiah. It is put into ruthless
execution by Nehemiah and even more so by Ezra.
In the next chapter, we comment on various pieces in Isaiah
40-55 and 60-62 to demonstrate the evidence for the above pro-
position. To some extent, it is a development of the examination of
various passages in the article in SOTP, pp. 187-200. J. LINDBLOM
criticised 1) these interpretations as 'somewhat original but sometimes
hazardous exegesis.' Everything depends upon the initial assumptions.
In reply to the charge that the majority of scholars assume that the
prophet was a universalist and that this prior assumption influences
their exegesis throughout, he says: 'It would be equally correct to
say that their (i.e. DE BOER and I) own interpretation depends on their
idea that the prophet was a consistent nationalist.' 2) This, of course,
is quite right. Everything does indeed depend upon the categories of
judgment which the exegete brings to his material. All that can be
done is to put forward interpretations of the various sections of
chapters 40-55, 60-62, based on the assumptions that the Servant
is primarily the 597 B.C. exiles, and that the prophet is a convinced,
persistent and consistent nationalist. The reader must judge which set
1) Prophecy in Ancient Israel (1963), p. 428.
2) op. cit., p. 428.
176 .N. H. SNAITH

of assumptions is the more likely to be those of the Second Isaiah.

Was he an innovator, as the majority of scholars assume? Or is he in
the line of his predecessors and successors, as we assume?
LINDBLOM goes so far as to agree that prior to 539 B.C. the prophet
had a nationalist outlook,!) and that he became a universalist after
539 B.C. We agree that there was a change in the prophet's outlook.
We agree also that the date of the change was roughly 539 B.C. But
we think that the change was not one which welcomed all Gentiles,
but from the narrower idea of the Servant as the 597 B.C. exiles (cf.
Jeremiah, Ezekiel) to the wider idea of all the exiles and possibly all
exiled Israelites, but definitely not those who remained in Jerusalem.

1) op. cit., p. 428.

 CHAPTER FIVE

EXEGESIS OF ISAIAH 40-55, 60-62

This chapter consists of detailed exegesis of sections and verses in

the nineteen chapters of the Second Isaiah, on the basis that (i) the
Second Isaiah was essentially a nationalist, and (ii) the Servant of the
LORD is primarily the 597 B.C. exiles, and secondarily all the Baby-
lonian exiles.
Isaiah 40: 1 f Who is to be comforted? and who is to administer
the comfort? The answer is that 'my people' are to administer the
comfort to 'Jerusalem.' The passage with which we are concerned is
40: 1 and 2a:
Comfort-ye, comfort-ye, my-people,
saith your-God:
Speak-ye to-the-heart-of Jerusalem,
and-calI-aloud to-her ...
The frequent assumption is that we have here an exact parallelism
between the two longer elements in this pair of 3: 2 couplets, even
though there is no such parallel in the shorter lines. It is thus assumed
that 'my people' is the object of the verb 'comfort'; 'comfort ye'
being the equivalent of 'speak to the heart of,' and 'my people' the
equivalent of 'Jerusalem.' This is what the Versions mostly do. Thus,
LXX makes 'my people' the object of the verb 'comfort,' but then
feels compelled to supply a vocative in order to indicate who it is
that is bidden to act as comforter. LXX therefore inserts 'Ye priests'
at the beginning of v. 2, and is followed in this by the Syro-hexaplar.
The Targum assumed that the command to comfort is addressed to
the prophets, and inserts this. Another suggestion is made by F. M.
CROSS, Jr. and adopted by G. E. WRIGHT,l) namely, that God is in-
structing his angels in the heavenly assembly. The Syriac took 'my
people' to be the object of the verb, but makes no explanatory inter-
polation. But the Vulgate has popule meus, making 'my people' a vo-
cative,2) and then follows with consolamini, which the Douay Version

1) The Old Testament against its Environment, 1950, p. 37n.

2) WRIGHT has not considered this possibility, but thinks of the verb as active,
and not passive.
178 N. H. SNAITH

renders 'be comforted.' But the Latin form is not decisively a passive.
It can indeed be the passive of consolare (and so 'be comforted'), but
this verb is markedly rare. It is much more likely that we are dealing
with the deponent verb consolari (and so 'give comfort'). The first
hand of codex ~ has Arx6-:, (vocative) instead of the normal LXX
accusative. It seems most likely that LXX intended the deponent verb
and that Douay misinterpreted the intention of the Latin under the
influence of the orthodox LXX text. It is not possible to decide from
the Hebrew accents whether the Masoretic tradition intended the one
or the other. The accents would be the same in either case, since both
involve the second wold of the three being more closely connected
with the first word than with the third. 1) The most that can be
established is that 'my people' is probably, though not certainly,
vocative, and thus that 'my people' is bidden to comfort Jerusalem.
It depends upon where 'my people' are. If 'my people' are the ones to
be comforted, then 'my people' are to be identified with Jerusalem.
If we were right in our intepretation of 48: 1-11 (end of the last
chapter), then quite definitely 'my people' is not to be identified with
Jerusalem. What we have is 'my people', now on the way back or
about to be on the way back, bringing comfort to the ruined city.
In 40: 9 the message is certainly to 'the cities of Judah,' but what is
the meaning of c,w,,'
li"fv~~? It could mean, as LEvy 2) suggests, that
Zion-Jerusalem is the messenger who is to announce the good news
to the cities of Judah. It is sometimes said that the Greek Versions
make Zion the messenger, but this is by no means certain. It is true
that in classical Greek c:urxYYC:A(~ofLrxL takes the accusative of the messen-
ger and the dative of the recipient, but in New Testament Greek both
are in the accusative. Who is to say what LXX intends when the noun
is indeclinable? The more natural interpretation is that the meaning
is 'Zion's messenger,' i.e. a messenger to Zion, especially since this
seems to be the case in 41: 27 and 52: 7. Therefore, we hold that in
40: 1, 2a Zion-Jerusalem is the recipient of the message and 'my
people' is the messenger. The good tidings are that the LORD is
coming back again to His Holy City, the city which He left in order to
be with the exiles, Ezek. 1; 11: 16. He is coming as a mighty one,
conquering and ruling, but leading His flock like a shepherd with the
utmost care and solicitude, carrying new-born lambs in the folds of
His cloak and leading on by easy stages the ewes that are heavy with
1) WICKES, Prose Accents, 1887, p. 69.
2) op. cit., p. 117.
 CHAPTER FIVE 179

young. 1) Thus 'the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come with
singing unto Zion' (51: 11), and then it is that Zion once more will be
'my people' (51: 16).
If it is true that 'my people' (40: 1), the returning exiles, are to
bring effective comfort and relief to Jerusalem, then it follows that
the group which has committed iniquity is Jerusalem and not 'my
people.' It is Jerusalem's 'warfare' (N~:S here means 'period of hard
service, hardship, toil') that is finished and her iniquity that is pardon-
ed. The phrase im:s: ;':S'l means that the punishment which she has
received is adequate to compensate for the iniquity she committed:
sin demands the full price and when this is paid in full, then 'sin' (or
the nature of things, or God) is satisfied il:S'. Whether Jerusalem
received double punishment or not,2) the point here is that Jerusalem
sinned and Jerusalem paid.
Isaiah 40: 7. 'the people is grass.' This is a gloss, and has nothing to
do with our problems. See above, pp. 168 f.
Isaiah 41: 8. 'Israel my servant' is equal to 'Jacob whom I have
chosen.' Jacob-Israel is either 'the seed of Abraham my loving one'
or 'Abraham's seed, my loving one.' The same uncertainty occurs in
2 Chron. 20: 7, though Jas. 2: 23 speaks of Abraham as the friend of
God. The phrase 'whom I have chosen' is equivalent to 'my servant'
also in 44: 1 f. and 45: 4. The call is to the Servant, which is Israel, and
'I have chosen thee and not cast thee away' (v. 9). That is, the exile
did not mean rejection. On the contrary, it meant their being chosen
ones, recognised as being the descendants of Abraham. God is going
to make these exiles conquerors ('uphold thee with my victorious 3)
right hand'v. 10, RSV). Jacob the worm and Israel the grub 4) (v. 14)
is going to be helped by God, his redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,
and everything is going to be smashed flat before him. Compare our
interpretation of 41: 2-3 as referring to Jacob-Israel and not to Cyrus
(pp. 163 f).

1) AV 'with young' and RSV; RV 'give suck.' The Arabic gala means 'give
suck (while pregnant),' and the Syriac 'ula' means both 'foetus' and 'suckling.'
2) The root ~!:l::l means 'double over.' The noun can mean 'the double of the
jaw' Job 41: 5. It can mean being folded over, like the curtain (Exod. 26: 9)
or the breastpiece (Exod. 28: 16). Thus it might mean 'equivalent' and not neces-
sarily 'twice.'
3) The Hebrew is "P':S, my vindicating, rectifying, saving power.
4) Most read 1"I~"J (grub), but G. R. DRIVER retains the text and translates
'louse' (cf. Accadian mutu), JTS 36 (1935), p. 399.
180 N. H. SNAITH

Isaiah 42: 1. According to LXX, this verse should read 'Jacob my

servant' and 'Israel my chosen.' Evidently LXX identified the Servant
with Jacob-Israel. But Jacob-Israel means the exiles, not the old
Israel, not the Palestinians, but the 'good figs' of Jer. 24: 5. It means
the new Israel, the one that is ransomed and redeemed (41: 14).
SKINNER 1) says: 'It is at least true that if the Servant of vv. 1-4 be
Israel, he is Israel in a new character.' To which the answer is 'quite':
he is the new Israel which arose as if from the dead (Ezek. 37; Isa.
53: 8 f.), triumphant and victorious.
Isaiah 42: 6-9. Here the Servant is apparently distinct from those who
have blind eyes, who sit in the darkness of dungeons. The Servant has
been called by God 'in righteousness': this means 'in victory, with
salvation' or, as C. R. NORTH 2) translates it, 'for a saving purpose'
But whereas Professor NORTH sees the saving purpose as for the
nations, our judgment is that it is for Israel as a whole. The difference
between the Servant and the prisoners who are to be released is, we
suggest, due to the two deportations. The first deportment of 597 B.C.
was, as we pointed out earlier (p. 170), of all the leaders, so that 'none
remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land,' 2 Kgs.
24: 14. This statement may well be, at least in part, Judaean pro-
paganda against the Palestinians (cf. 2 Kgs. 17: 24-41), but we do
know that hopes for the future were centred primarily around King
J ehoiachin, and that the seventy years of the exile (J er. 25: 11 f.;
29: 10) are reckoned ftom 597 B.C. Further, it is these first exiles who
are Jeremiah's 'good figs,' and it is those who are not the first exiles
who are Ezekiel's 'rebellious house.' This first group is to be the
instrument by which all the exiles return home. They are thus 'the
covenant of the people,' 3) the means by which God will bind into
one again the scattered People of God, and thus bring them once
more into relationship with Him. The People of God does not in-
clude any that remained in Palestine after 586 B.C., unless it includes
some who were deported c. 581 B.C. In this way we explain as meaning
'Israel' passages which refer to others being rescued and restored
apart from the Servant, and we are not led to identify these with the
Gentiles.

1) op. cit., p. 28.

2) The Second Isaiah, p. 38.
3) We regard it as most important to retain the singular here and not assume a
plural, as NORTH does, and as LINDBLOM does, Prophecy in Ancient Israel. 1963,
p.400.
 CHAPTER FIVE 181

Isaiah 42: 18-25. As has been pointed out,!) much confusion has been
caused by the assumption that the 'blind ones' of v. 16 and v. 18
are identical with the 'blind one' of v. 19. The 'blind ones' of v. 16
are the exiles, all of them. Also 'the blind ones' (and 'the deaf ones') of
v. 18 seem to be the exiles. But suddenly the writer turns and says
that 'my servant,' 'my messenger whom I send,' 'the one who is to
be restored,' 2) 'the Servant of the LORD' is the blindest of all. The
Servant is blind and cannot see that it is all 'for his (i.e. God's)
righteousness' sake'. As NORTH has pointed out, this means 'for his
saving purpose' 3) ; this is the only rendering which gives the phrase
meaning. Then 'his law' (v. 21b) means 'his teaching' (NORTH). All
this is why he (Jacob-Israel) is a people robbed, imprisoned, without
anyone at all to deliver. The LORD did this, against whom we (not
the Servant) sinned. They (again not the Servant) would not obey
God's law, and it was upon him (the Servant) that the disaster fell, but
he did not understand. Cf. 53: 1-12 which also says that the people
sinned and the Servant suffered the death of exile.
Isaiah 43: 1. The LORD speaks to the newly created and newly form-
ed Jacob-Israel, whom He has redeemed and to whom He has given
this name,4) so that Jacob-Israel is His. The prophet means that God
has given this name Jacob-Israel to the exiles, those who will be
passing through flood and fire. The prophet uses these words 'create,'5)
'form,' 'make' again and again, so important is his message that God
has remade, recreated Israel. He is referring to an action in the immed-
iate past, actually taking place, or is truly imminent. He does not mean
that God created, formed, made this Jacob-Israel long, long ago.
He means that God has just created and has recently named this
Jacob-Isreal. He created them for His glory, so that all the world
should admire and be impressed.
Isaiah 43: 8-13. It is usual to translate N':!ml as an imperative, either

1) SOTP, pp. 194 ff.

2) The heb. C~~~ is very difficult; see NORTH, The Second Isaiah, pp. 39, 118.
We take the word to have the same meaning as c,~w in 53; 5, 'the chastisement
which brought us prosperity, well-being, restored life.' So either retain the vowels of
the Hebrew text and think of the servant as the one who is to be restored, or
(better) read as a picel, in the sense of 'restore' BDB p. 1022b (top).
3) op. cit., pp. 39, 118.
4) The ancient Versions have the suffix 'I have named thee,' as if reading "l"lN'j:'.
6) 'create' N':l 43: 1; 43: 7; 43: 15.
'form' ':!t, 43: 1; 43: 7; 43: 21; 44: 2; 44: 21; 44: 24; 45: 11; 49: 5.
'make' ;,iv:s7 43: 7; 44: 2; 51: 13; 54: 5.
182 N. H. SNAITH

assuming an irregularity or reading a {ere or making it a plural; and

then to follow by translating the prefect ':S:lpl as 'let... be gathered
together' (RV) or 'let... gather together' (RSV). But NORTH rightly
translates this last as a perfect: 'all the nations have been convened.' 1)
The opening verb is also a perfect, and from v. 9 it may be understood
that the event is regarded as having taken place. These all may well
be 'prophetic perfects,' the prophet meaning either that the event is
absolutely certain or is imminent or (more probably) both. We would
translate, inverting the construction in the first line:
The people that is blind, yet has eyes,
has been brought out,
The deaf ones, though they have ears.
All the Gentiles are gathered together;
The peoples assemble.
Who among them foretold this,
And announced the former things?
Let them produce their witnesses and
show they are right (justify themselves),
And let men hear and say, 'It is true.'
The passage goes on to say that the new Israel, the released ones,
those who God has saved, are the living witnesses to the saving might
of the Only God. There is nothing here about saving the Gentiles.
They are on trial because they did not forsee the 'former things'
(usually this means the first Exodus), nor did they foretell this second
Exodus.

Isaiah 43: 14-21. God here speaks to the exiles. For their sake he has
sent to Babylon and brought down all the honoured ones,2) all of
them, and (?) the Chaldaeans shall be bound in fetters. 3 ) This is the
God who makes a path through the sea, as He did in the first Exodus,
who brought out chariot and horse and destroyed them all. But do
not look back (v. 18) at these former things. These things took place
long ago. Look forward to the new thing (i.e. this second deliverance)

1) S1, p. 41.
2) G. R. DRIVER, ]TS xxxiv (1933), p. 39; C'lJ'i~, cf. Syriac beraIJ 'honoured'.
3) The text is uncertain. This reading is based on LXX (Nca and A) E'I XAOWLC;
ae:e~crO'lTIX\. The normal LXX is 'ships' as the Hebrew, though this might easily be
'with lamentations' (cf. RSV). It is possible that Cod. A may be a correction be-
cause of 'bind,' but it is difficult to see how ae:e~crO'lTIX~ could arise in the first
place without xAo~oi:C;.
 CHAPTER FIVE 183

I am about to do. God is going to make a way through the wilderness,

and rivers 1) in the desert. All this is to give drink to this newly chosen
people whom God has formed for Himself and whose duty is to
rehearse His praise. The whole passage then, refers to the journey
across the desert of the exiles, the newly chosen People of God.
Isaiah 43: 22-28. A new section begins here. The words are addressed
to the old Jacob-Israel, who did not call 2) upon God, nor did they
weary themselves in their service to Him. They brought whole-
offerings, butnottoGod. Their sacred meals (n~t) were not in honour
of Him. God did not make them worship 3) Him with tribute-offerings
(ilMl~: the cereal-offering of post-exilic times), nor did He weary
them by insisting on them providing frankincense. It was not for Him
that they bought fragrant cane, and they did not satiate him with the
fat of their sacred feasts. 4) The old Jacob-Israel did indeed worship
(serve) God, but it was with their sins. They did indeed weary Him,
but it was with their iniquities. Then in v. 25 God says that He, even
He, is the One who blots out Israel's rebel actions, and forgets his
sins. Then (v. 26) let us see what can be done about it. Recall it all
to my memory, and let us judge the matter. Recount what you have to
say, you that you may be cleared of your sins (the verb is pi~, put
in the right, declared innocent). But no: the whole story is one of
unrepented sin, and this was so all down the years. Their first an-
cestor sinned, God's spokesmen to them were rebellious against Him,
His princes defiled His sanctuary.5) And so God gave Jacob to the
ban, to be utterly destroyed, and He made Israel something for every
one to revile. The section tells of the utter and complete rejection of
the old Jacob-Israel.
Isaiah 44: 1-5. This section is linked to the previous section by the
word iln17' (and now). It seems to be outside the metrical system,
though such statements tend to be subjective in a line like this one,
but single words are found at the beginning of a piece. Here the word
provides the contrast between the old Jacob-Israel of the last section

1) Qumran (A) has 'paths,' which may well be right. It makes a parallel, and
see v. 20b.
2) Both the direct accusative and the preposition lamed are found with this
meaning. The negative is carried over into the second clause, as LXX and V
realised.
3) The word also means 'serve, act as a slave.' Cf. NORTH, SI, p. 42.
4) All the fat of the sacred-meal n~t went to the altar, and none of the flesh.
6) This follows LXX.
184 N. H. SNAITH

and the new Jacob-Israel of this section. God has chosen a new
Jacob-Israel, Jacob who is the Servant, Israel whom God has chosen.
He has made him as though newly born. The offspring of the returned
exiles (water for the thirsty, streams on the dry ground) will increase
and multiply like poplars and willows by the river side. They will
claim that they are God's people. There is no basis for assuming that
those mentioned in v. 5 are foreigners, except a basic assumption that
the Second Isaiah is a universalist. The speakers in v.5 are the des-
cendants mentioned in v. 3 .DILLMANN 1) realised that those who are
speaking are Israelites by birth.
Isaiah 44: 21-22. Here Jacob-Israel is the Servant whom God has
formed and chosen. Israel was made for the express purpose of being
God's Servant. Jacob-Israel will not be forgotten 2) by God. V. 22 is
difficult because these words for 'sin' sometimes mean the actual sin
itself, and sometimes the punishment: which could well be the mean-
ing here. In this case, the meaning is that the sufferings of the exile are
over, and God has redeemed Israel.
Isaiah 44: 23. is the description of the triumphant return and restora-
tion of Jacob-Israel, with all the natural world exulting. Cf. 49: 13;
55: 12.
Isaiah 44: 24-28. The great Creator God speaks to the people He
has formed. He confirms what the Servant has said: Jerusalem shall
be rebuilt and the cities of Judah inhabited. Cyrus is going to be
the actual agent in this. The Hebrew apparently intends to say that
Cyrus will give the rebuilding instructions, but LXX and V have
the same construction as vv. 26a, 27, 28, all of which makes God the
speaker. Probably the Hebrew is right, and the Versions are as-
similating. Josephus says (Ant. Iud. XI i 1) that it was when Cyrus
read this passage concerning the rebuilding of the city that he took
appropriate action.
Isaiah 45: 1-7. Cyrus is God's anointed one. This means that he is
appointed for a special purpose,3) in this case to free Jacob-Israel
from captivity in Babylonia, to allow these displaced persons to return

1) Der Prophet Jesaia, 1890, in loco

2) This is the pointing of the Hebrew, and it would appear to be correct. God
will always remember His Servant, the new Jacob-Israel. Other suggestions are
'you must not forget me' (cf. RVm) and 'you must not play false with me.' When
God remembers, He acts and saves.
3) The Jews from Cyrus to Herod, 1949, pp. 106-112.
 CHAPTER FIVE 185

home. Cyrus is chosen for the sake of Jacob-Israel, the chosen

Servant of God. Cyrus never knew God, but God nevertheless gives
him strength, so that all the wide world may know that the LORD
is the only God there is. The call of Cyrus to rebuild the city is
mentioned again in v. 13 and he is to free the exiles though no payment
is to be made to secure their freedom.
Isaiah 45: 14-17. There is much dispute concerning this section.
If the section is to be connected with the previous verses, then the
workers of Egypt and the merchants of Ethiopia and the tall Sabaeans
will come and pay homage to Cyrus and they will say "Nay, but God
is in thee." Such an acknowledgement will be wholly contrary to
expectation. I) This identification with Cyrus is in Jerome, and amongst
moderns it is advocated by SKINNER, MOWINCKEL, and others. 2) If,
however, this section is regarded as distinct from the previous verses,
then Egypt, Ethiopia and the Sabeans are to come to Jacob-Israel,
astonished that God is to be found in them because of all the utter
disasters which have overtaken them. It is all idolators who are to be
thrown into confusion, but Jacob-Isarel will be saved and delivered
once and for all with never any more disappointment or disillusion.
God must be in (with) Israel because of Israel's triumph. Verse 15
looks like a pious comment by a scribe.
Isaiah 45: 18-25. As has been pointed out,3) if verses 22 and 23 are
taken separately and lifted out of their context, they can be interpreted
as evidence of a generous universalism towards the Gentiles. This is
what orthodox modern commentators actually do. But 'all the ends
of the earth' does not mean the Gentiles: cf. 43: 5, 6. And verse 23
does not involve, as many suppose, humble worship in willing
loyalty. It means 'worship' only to those who are accustomed to kneel
in worship, but not to those who prostrate themselves. To kneel
means to bow low in humble obeisance and subservience. The call is
(v. 20) to those who have escaped from the Gentiles, and the climax
is (v. 25) that 'by (through, by the agency of) the LORD all Israel's

1) Both ~~ and 1~ can be used in discussion. ~N means 'Yes, and .. .' with the
speaker going on to add further corroboration. 1N means 'yes, but .. .' with the
speaker proceeding to produce an objection. Always a negative, unexpected ele-
ment is involved: see 'The meaning of the Hebrew 1N', VT. xiv, 2, (April 1964),
pp. 221-225.
2) NORTH, DI, p. 137, who is of the opinion that the 'thee' is Jacob-Israel.
Also WHITEHOUSE, Isaiah (Cent. Bible), ii, p. 125.
3) SOTP, p. 196.
186 N. H. SNAITH

descendants (i.e. the descendants of the exiles) shall be justified (seen

to be in the right, vindicated, triumphant) and shall boast.' Here is
conquering, boasting Israel. Verse 22 we take to refer to the exiled
Israelites (cf. 49: 6 as well as 43: 5, 6). Verses 23 and 24 describe the
humble subservience of the Gentiles. As they bow in humility before
God, they will say (LXX, verse 24) 'Nay,l) but in the LORD are
victorious acts and strength. All men shall come to him, and all who
were formerly his antagonists shall lose face.' But all the descendants
of Israel shall be gloriously vindicated.

Isaiah 46: 3-4. This section is wholly independent of verses 1-2,

which describe the panic in Babylon and the rush to load the idols
on to pack-animals to save them when the city is captured and sacked.
The prophet here is talking about the birth of the new Jacob-Israel,
not yet come to birth, but being delivered out of the womb of God. 2)
This babe to be born is the remnant 3) of the old Jacob-Israel. How-
ever long the birth is delayed, even though the parent's hair be gray,
the birth of the new Israel is certain. This new Israel is the exiles,
preserved and reborn. Here is the birth of post-exilic Judaism.

Isaiah 46: 8-11. As NORTH pointed out,4) 'the rebels' (RV and RSV
have 'the transgressors') are the prophet's own people, and not the
Gentiles. We understand the reference to be to the exiles as a whole,
slow to heed and respond to the words of the Servant. The 'bird of
prey' (v. 11, as RSV. RV has 'a ravenous bird') from the east is the
Servant, the new Israel, who is represented as being 'from the east' in
41: 2 also; see pp. 163f. above. Compare also 44: 26. All three passages
hang together; either they all three refer to Cyrus, or, as we think,
all three refer to the triumphant, rampant People of God. Verse 12
encourages all who losing heart (~~ "~N, cf. LXX) because they
think they are far from vindication (:1i"~' victory, salvation). But this
vindication is near and this salvation will not be long delayed. It will
be granted in Zion, and it will be for the new Israel, the returned
exiles.

1) The Hebrew is 1~t See note on p. 185.

2) See the strong anthropomorphisms of verse 4 also, where ,,~~ means
'deliver, give birth' as in Isa. 66 7. See 'The Width and Length of Words,' ET Iv
10 (July 1944), pp. 265-268.
3) Both l"l"NlD and 'NlV are used of the Remnant, though the latter comes to be
the technical term.
4) SI, p. 166.
 CHAPTER FIVE 187

Isaiah 48: 1-11. See pp. 173f. above, where it is argued that verses 1 and
2 refer to those who still are in Jerusalem, men who falsely claimed
to be true worshippers of God. They say they belong to the holy city
and they profess to rely on the God of Israel. But it is all false. Com-
mentators have found this section difficult, and some find more than
one piece in these eleven verses. DUHM tought the whole piece has
been substituted for a much milder passage. Many difficulties are
removed if we think of the Jerusalemites as the rejected ones ana the
exiles as the remnant, those that have been refined and chosen in the
furnace of affiiction. The old J acob-Israel had been told by the prophets
of what would come to pass (v. 3), and now it has all happened. New
things have come to pass, things that have been hidden and secret (i.e.
in God's secret counsel). But they took no notice (v. 8), have not
listened, born a rebel and still a rebel. Nevertheless God is not going
to exterminate Jacob-Israel. He has refined the old Jacob-Israel,
tested and chosen them in the furnace of affliction. In v. 10 the
Hebrew is the root 'M:l, which means 'choose' (cf. RV) and not
'try, test' (as RSV). We see no need to alter the text to ,'l"llM:l (tried,
tested) as some do. The passage refers to the choosing of the new
Israel (the exiles) out of the furnace in which the old Israel was in-
volved.
Isaiah 48: 12-19. These verses are notoriously difficult, since the
rhythm and the pronouns are constantly changing. To what extent
these changes are due to the activity of scribes, either by accident or
in seeking to 'improve' or 'correct', it is difficult to say. There is
always the possibility that we have a number of separate pieces.
Verse 12 is a summons to Jacob-Israel, the new Israel, the exiles
whom God has called to be His people. Verse 14 is a call to all and
sundry to hear the declaration of God concerning what is about to
happen to Babylon and the Chaldeans. The LORD chose (:l:"lN,
special love, choice) Israel, and he shall fulfil His (God's) purpose
(rElM as in 46: 10) concerning Babylon, and exercise His power (lit.
'his arm,' unless we follow LXX and read 'and concerning the seed
of' 37j!=t ~ for '37'" the Chaldeans). God has spoken and He has sum~
moned him, brought him along, and Israel has made his way pros-
perous.1) Verse 16 says that God has never made any secret of all
this: i.e. His intention to call the Servant and lead him and the people
to prosperity. But now, NOW (:"Il"l37\ emphatic, as in 44: 1) the climax

1) LXX, Targum and Syriac have first person here also, as throughout the verse.
188 N. H. SNAITH

has come, and God has sent the Servant forth (on his conquering
way), and 'my spirit... ' This is a noted crux, and it is very likely that
a word has been lost, such as '(is) upon him.' In any case, the general
sense is clear. God has called Jacob-Israel and now at long last God's
plans are going to be fulfilled. There has been much discussion as to
whether vv. 17-19 refer to the past or the future. It is agreed that the
first stichos of v. 17 can be translated '0 that thou wouldest hearken .. '
(so RVm), but if we follow with 'then... ' ,the reference must be to
the past. But there is a way in which the reference to the future can be
maintained: and such a reference is much more in keeping with the
Second Isaiah's attitude rather than useless repining for what might
have been. It is best to read: '0 that thou wouldest hearken to my
commandments and your peace be like a river ... (19b) then their
(your children, descendants) name shall never be cut off... '. This
makes the verses promise unending prosperity for the future depend-
ant on the new Israel keeping the commandments of God.
Isaiah 48: 20 f. Jacob is the LORD's servant whom He has released
from Babylon. The journey back to Jerusalem is described in terms
borrowed from the story of the Deliverance from Egypt, for this is
a second exodus and it ends in a second entry into and occupation of
the Promised Land. Verse 22 seems to be a pious addition: cf. 57: 21,
possibly dating from a time when the whole of chapters 40-66 were
for some reason divided into three sections of approximately equal
length: 40-48, 49-57, 58-66. The division does not seem to have
anything to do with the contents of the sections, and any reason
offered for such division is wholly without evidence.
Isaiah 49: 1-6. This is the second of the so-called Servant Songs.
The Servant is Israel (v. 3). All who insist upon an individualistic
interpretation of the identity of the Servant find themselves con-
strained to omit 'Israel' in this verse. It is indeed missing in one
Hebrew MS, but this is no. 96 in KENNICOTT'S list, in many ways
the least satisfactory of his manuscripts. He says of it plurimas habet
variationes. The metrical evidence for omission is decidedly weak.
Indeed, if this word is to be omitted on metrical grounds, then almost
any word can be omitted anywhere. The rhythm, especially of the
latter half of the lines, is most irregular in this section. Here the Ser-
vant is declaring his calling and his mission in the Gentile world.
This mission is not only to restore the Jacob-Israel of the Babylonian
exile, but to be a guiding light throughout the whole of the Gentile
 CHAPTER FIVE 189

world in order that God's salvation may extend everywhere. But this
is God's salvation of the Jews: see pp. 155 f. above.

Isaiah 49: 7-13. Here the LORD is speaking to a despondent Jacob-

Israel, despised 1) by men, abhorred by the Gentiles, and subject to
tyrants. There is to be a complete change. When kings and princes see
a triumphant Israel, they will leap to their feet in respect and bow
low in submission, all because of the LORD who is to be relied upcn,
the Holy One of Israel who has chosen Isreel. Verse 8 says that God
has answered and helped Israel in a time of favour l':S'"l. This means
a time when God acts favourably with goodwill. It is the same as 'a
day of favourable visitation,' a day of salvation. The journey home
will be without the normal hardships of desert travel. They will
come from far (i.e. from far away Babylon) and others from the north
and the west, and yet others from Sinim (? Syene): but they will all
be Israelites.

Isaiah 49: 14-21. Here is consolation for Zion,-the city, not the
inhabitants. The city complains that she is forsaken and forgotten.
But God denies this. He has remembered her and has her walls in
mind. Her sons 2) will hurry to her, and those that destroyed her will
go away. If Zion raises her eyes and looks, she will see her children
returning, crowds of them, so many that there will not be enough
living space for them. In v. 21 "~'l (solitary) means husband away
and therefore no chance of legitimate children. The two words n"l
(exile) and n""o (removed) are not in LXX and seem genuinely to be
outside the metrical construction. They look like realistic interpre-
tations of a prosaic nature inserted into an elaborate metaphor.
Further, they are the two words which make Zion an exile, which she
definitely is not. Zion is the desolate and empty city, and is quite
distinct from 'the People of God': cf. note on 40: 2.

Isaiah 49: 22-26. In these verses two things are plain. First, Zion's
sons and daughters are being brought back to her from afar. Second,
the Gentiles will be their humble slaves. Indeed, the kings and queens
of the Gentiles will be in humble attendance on Zion's returning
children. Humbly they will bow low with their faces in the dust and
they will lick the dust off Zion's children's feet. Nothing could be so

1) See the full discussion by NORTH, SI, pp. 190 f.

2) The Versions have 'builders' ';J'~:", which makes good sense, but the Hebrew
is better.
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV I3
190 N. H. SNAITH

abject, and no domination so complete. Normally it is impossible to

snatch captives away from a warrior, but in this case God will free
captive Israel, because He is the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Mighty
One of Jacob. The section ends with brutal revenge on the op-
pressors of Israel. In this section, the exiles are the new Israel, and the
prophet is entirely nationalistic. Note also that in v. 22 for C'~!.1
(peoples), LXX has v~(JOUC; (isles), but there is no need to assume that
LXX was reading C"N. It is more likely that LXX knew that the plural
C'~!.1 means the Gentiles, and this is what 'the isles' means in the
Second Isaiah.
Isaiah 50: 1-3. NORTH 1) is of the opinion that the questions in v. 1
are rhetorical, and that the meaning is: There never was a divorce,
and I was never so poor that I had any creditor. But Zion was divorced
and the old Israel was sold. The meaning is: Let us have a look at
that writ of divorce and see what it says, why the divorce took place:
Let us get hold of that particular creditor and ask him why the sale
took place. The answer is that it was all because of the people's ini-
quities that they were sold; and it was because of Zion's rebellious
acts (RV, RSV 'transgressions', wrongly) that she was divorced. 1'he
difficulties arise through assuming that the metaphors of divorce and
selling into slavery are both to be taken to include the exile. This is
the problem of all exegesis and indeed of every discussion. When
a metaphor or an illustration is used, to what extent is it to be applied?
A feature in all arguments is that one man uses an illustration to
illustrate a particular point, and the other man picks out other things
in the illustration which the first man never intended. Here we would
maintain, the reference is only to the disaster and not to the exile
which followed it. 1'he prophet is not talking about the exiles at all in
verses 1 and 2, but only about Zion and the old Israel. Zion was
divorced and her inhabitants sold away, so that when God came to
Zion, there was nobody there; when he called there was nobody to
answer. They had all been sold; the People of God were no longer
there. But (v. 2a) God is able to redeem and deliver. He can dry up the
sea (which is what He did in ancient time), and He can turn rivers
into desert, so that the fish are in distress 2) and die. It is not said that
God will redeem the actual individuals whom He has sold, but that

1) SI, pp. 198 f.

2) Ugarit b'I (be bad). DE BOER, op. cit., p. 53; G. R. DRIVER, ]TS xxxi (1930),
pp. 276 f.
 CHAPTER FIVE 191

He will redeem and deliver. We believe that it is the exiles that He

will redeem and deliver, but not the old Israel.

Isaiah 50:4-9. This is the third of the so-called Servant Songs.

Verse 4 is uncertain, but it speaks of the Servant learning his lessons,
being roused regularly in the early dawn to hear what God has to say
to him, and thus being able to declare what he, as a good pupil, has
learned. It was a hard discipline, but the Servant did not rebel against
his lot. He was submissive. He bore the humiliation of exile and
captivity. Therefore God has helped him and he has not been shamed
out of existence. He endured bravely with set teeth (lit. 'set my face
like a flint'), and he is sure he will not be shamed for ever. His vindica-
tion is near. He is prepared to face any accuser and he will win, be-
cause God will help him.

Isaiah 50: 10-11. All are walking in the dark and have no light, but
there are two types. One type is the man who fears God (worships
Him devoutly), relies upon God and obeys the Servant. All will be
well with him. The other type seeks to make its own fire and does not
trust in God nor obey the Servant. Any such will walk in the fires they
have made and burn with their own brands.

Isaiah 51: 1-3. The meanings of the metaphors 'rock' and 'waterpit'
are discussed at length by DE BOER,!) but the main message is clear.
Remember Abraham and Sarah, who went out from this very country
where you are exiled. Abraham was but one man when I called him,
but his posterity multiplied like the stars of heaven. What God did
for Abraham, He can and will do for you. Zion will be changed from
ruin and desert into fruitfulness and joy like that of Eden the Garden
of God.

Isaiah 51: 4-6. Many follow the Syriac and 12 de Rossi MSS in verse 4
and read C'~:;: (peoples) for ,~:;: (my people), and c'~'Nl;l (nations,
peoples) for 'IJ'Nl;l (my nation, people). G. R. DRIVER 2) thinks they
are abbreviations. NORTH 3) suggests that the singular forms may be
dogmatic emendations. We would suggest, on the contrary that the
proposed changes from singular to plural are dogmatic emendations.
God's fiat will go out as a shining light throughout the world. He will

1) op. cit., pp. 58 if. He thinks the Rock is God, not Abraham.
2) 'Abbreviations in the Massoretic Text' in Textus I (1960), p. 115.
3) SI, p. 107.
192 N. H. SNAITH

suddenly 1) bring his vindication near and His salvation will go forth,
and He will judge the Gentiles by His power. This is the judgment
by the conqueror. The Gentiles (isles) will wait for Him and His
might. Compare 42: 4 where mp means 'wait,' but not necessarily
with hope (in Syriac the root means 'wait with dread'). So also ,n'
means 'wait' but not necessarily with eagerness (cf. 60: 9), though this
is the usual meaning. They are to wait for the might of His arm, and
this, combined with the judgment in strenght of verse 4, shows that
the section refers to the judgment of the Gentiles and not to their
salvation.

Isaiah 51: 7-8. This section says that no faithful Israelite need have
any fear of men, nor need he be disturbed by anything they say.
God's vindication of those who are devoted to His law is firm and
secure for ever.

Isaiah 51 : 9-11. The exiles shall return to Zion. The prophet links up
the coming deliverance with the Rahab-dragon myth, according to
which God overthrew the forces of chaos and destruction before the
beginning of the world; and also with the first deliverance from Egypt.
See Exod. 15: 4 and 5; Jonah 2: 3-6; Jer. 51: 34.

Isaiah 51: 12-16. God is Israel's comforter (cf. 40: 1). Israel has no
need to be afraid of mortal man, here today and gone tomorrow.
There is no need to fear the fury of the oppressor when he makes
preparations to destroy. The one who stoops will quickly be set
100se. 2) He will neither die nor starve. God inspires his speech, pro-
tects him. It is perhaps best to regard v. 16a as within brackets, and
then the stilling (l:li II, not l:li I) of the sea (v. 15a) is made prelimi-
nary to the work of creation (v. 16b), the stretching out of the heavens
and the founding of the earth.

Isaiah 51: 17-23. Jerusalem is in great distress, lying prostrate having

drunk to the dregs the cup of the LORD's anger. None of her children
are there to raise her up and guide her. This we take to fit in with
the Second Isaiah's usual attitude that the People of God are no longer
in Jerusalem, and so far as her true inhabitants are concerned, the
1) reading l:'liN with the next verse.
2) The verb :-rl::S in v. 14 means 'stoop, bend down.' The meaning can be
'cringe under the fury of the oppressor' or 'bow low under the burden of a slave.'
Also, nl'1~:-r can mean loosed from fear, loosed from the bonds of the burden,
loosed from the bonds of captivity.
 CHAPTER FIVE 193

city is empty. But God has taken the deadly cup away, and others
must drink it, those who have trodden down the people of God like
mire in the street.

Isaiah 52: 1-2. Zion-Jerusalem is to get up from the dust and put
on festive clothing. She is to be a holy city, and no uncircumcised,
ritually unclean foreigners will enter her any more. The people
(captive daughter of Zion) are to be released, and the rope which tied
them all neck by neck in one long line is to be loosed. There always
was violent antagonism in old Israel against those who were uncir-
cumcised, but here uncircumcision is linked with ritual uncleanness
and we have the beginnings of that exclusiveness which was the
dominant feature of Judaism. The uncircumcised are the Babylonian
conquerors and possibly also others who have infiltrated into the
city, who may actually be intended by the 'unclean'. In any case, the
returning exiles claimed that all 'the people of the land' were unclean.

Isaiah 52: 3-6. Some editors have regarded this section as 'an inter-
polation' or as an 'editorial insertion.' Phrases like this belong to the
same vocabulary and set of ideas as 'the main body' of the prophecy.
If there is no 'main body,' then how can there be an interpolation?
If the work of the prophet is regarded as being composed of fifty or
so pieces, then any change of metre or of matter does not necessarily
involve an insertion. It indicates another piece. In any case, if our
view of the identity of the Servant is sound, this section is very far
indeed from being an insertion. It is wholly in line with the prophet's
message. The prophet is speaking to the exiles, the People of God. They
are bidden to remember their history. They went down into Egypt
innocently to live there for a while, and they were made slaves. The
Assyrians unjustly oppressed them: this refers to the time from Jehu
onwards until the fall of Nineveh, except for the period of Assyrian
weakness in the time of Uzziah. Now once more, an innocent people
is oppressed. They are unjustly carried away into exile. This is in line
with the attitude of the prophet elsewhere, and it is also the attitude
of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. These exiles were the good figs. Those left
behind in Jerusalem were the bad figs. They were Ezekiel's 'House of
rebellion.' But the exiles, 'my people,' will know my Name: that is,
they will experience the establishment of God's reputation. This will
be when He rescues His people from captivity and restores them to
Zion. Then they will know that 'here I am' as in the ancient days.
194 N. H. SNAITH

Isaiah 52: 7-12. Here is a lyric declaring new life for Zion-Jerusalem.
'The messenger is bringing good news of salvation and prosperity.
His feet are on the mountains (cf. 40: 9) and he is calling (?) from the
mountains of Judaea across the valley to Jerusalem. He declares that
once more their God has triumphed and established His kingly rule.
'The phrase 1~~ m~' (the LORD has become king) is the Coronation
cry. God has just triumphed and has taken His seat upon His throne.
He has comforted (em; 40: 1) and redeemed Jerusalem. God has
returned to Jerusalem and once more 'Jerusalem' and 'my people' are
one. This time there is no haste, as there was in the flight from Egypt.
This is a triumphal march and all the wide world will see the great
salvation which God has wrought for Israel.
Isaiah 52: 13-15. This piece is usually held to be the opening of the
fourth and last so-called Servant Song, but it is more probably a
separate piece, though it may well stand as a title and summary of
chapter 53. 'The Servant will prosper, be exalted and extolled, and
be very high. There was a time when many (? the great ones) were
appalled at his plight, battered and bruised, afflicted with sickness out
of all human recognition. But the time will come when great nations
will leap 1) to their feet at his approach and clasp their hands to their
mouths in respect and honour. They will see such things as never were
told them before, and perceive things the like of which they have never
heard.
Isaiah 53. The first three verses tell of the utter astonishment of the
heathen world at the unexpected triumph of the Servant. Who, say
they, could possibly have believed what we have heard? Who would
have thought that in him of all people the victorious might of the
LORD would be revealed? He grew up 2) like a sucker, like a weak
sapling, from a root in a dry and waterless soil. He had no shape and
no beauty; there was nothing at all about him to admire. Men des-
pised, neglected him. He was a man of much suffering, brought low 3)
by sickness. Men hide their faces from such as he, and that is what the
speakers did. With verse 4 we get the beginning of the explanation first

1) See p. 161 above.

2) There is no need to read 'l'l~~ (before us) for "l~~ (before him). The
suffix is a reference back to the subject of the verb: G. R. DRIVER, ]TS 38 (1937),
p.48.
3) The root is ~,. II, Arabic wadu'a (be quiet, humiliated), D. W. THOMAS in
Record and Revelation (1938), pp. 393 f.
 CHAPTER FIVE 195

of the suffering and then of the triumph. Why did the Servant suffer?
And why so suddenly and unexpectedly did he triumph? The acknowl-
edged theory was that it is the guilty who suffer and it is the righteous
who triumph. Surely, to have suffered so much, he must have been
the worst of sinners. Surely, to have triumphed so completely, he must
have been the most upright and righteous of all. The Second Isaiah
supplies the answers in the rest of the chapter, and he speaks on behalf
of sinful, guilty Israel. He explains why it is that the sufferings must be
temporary, and why the triumph must be complete and lasting.
Verse 4 opens with l~N, which is a stronger form of 1N, itself ex-
pressing a contrast. It means: as a matter of fact, and quite contrary to
what has been supposed.
In point of fact, says the prophet, it was our sickness, but he
suffered. They were our pains, but he bore the heavy load of them.
It was he that was pierced because of our rebellious actions; he was
crushed because of our inqiuities. The chastisment which brought us
health/prosperitity fell on him, and through his wound there was
healing for us. All of which is saying that the Servant was wholly
innocent, that the suffering which he bore was not his at all, he bore
it instead of the guilty ones and they went free. The prophet continues:
we all of us strayed like sheep, we turned each one of us his own way,
and the LORD caused him to encounter the penalty for all of us.
This is not saying that the Servant suffered in order than the rest might
go free. There is nothing vicarious about his suffering in this sense. It
is just a plain fact that he suffered when he ought not to have suffered,
and we did not suffer when we ought to have suffered. He was treated
brutally,l) and he humbly submitted to such harsh treatment and
made no complaint. He was dumb and never opened his mouth, like
a sheep led to the slaughter or an ewe before her shearers. There is no
reference here whatever to any temple sacrifice; the point is the
helplessness and dumbness of the animal. He was taken away after 2)
an oppressive unjust sentence, and nobody was concerned about his
fate, for he was cut off from the land of the living, because of the
rebellion of my people the mortal blow was his. They made his grave
with the wicked (guilty) and with the rich 3) at his death, although
he had done nothing violent and had spoken no falsehood. Thus far

1) izm is used of the Egyption task-masters, Exod. 3: 7, etc.

2) The meaning is wholly uncertain: It could mean 'without arrest and trial,'
or 'after arrest and trial.' The preposition l~ is often difficult to translate.
3) See p. 215.
196 N. H. SNAITH

(end ofv. 9) the prophet has been declaring that the Servant is wholly
innocent and entirely undeserving of any evil fate. But there is a divine
law of retribution in this world and therefore it is entirely right and
indeed inevitable that the disasters of the Servant must be temporary.
If there is any justice at all in the world, then he must triumph. 1 here
was no period at which this belief was more widely held than the
period from which Deuteronomy comes, and especially the period of
the later sections of Deuteronomy. The prophet has referred to the
exile under the figure of death, as Ezekiel did in chapter 37. The
Servant must come to life again, as did the dried and apparently
wholly lifeless bones in Ezekiel's vision.
It was all part of the divine purpose that the Servant was crushed.
It was God who brought the sickness on him. But when 1) the Servant
provides (has provided) the compensatory payment for the wrong
that has been done, then he will see his descendants living long, the
greatest of earthly blessings, and the LORD's purpose will prosper in
his hands. Here c!V~ means compensation, substitution. The so-called
'guilt-offering' was actually a compensation offering, and was pre-
sented in the Second Temple where damage had been done and the
loss could usually be assessed. It could be for either inadvertent errors
or deliberate offences. The essence of the offering was always that
it was a compensation, a substitution. 2) 1'here is no record of this
particular sacrifice before the post-exilic period, and we therefore
see no reference here to any ritual sacrifice. The Servant was an
innocent substitute for the guilty. The prophet is not concerned about
what happens to the sinners, nor does he say that the Servant suffered
and died for the sinners in order to save them. There was nothing
vicarious in this sense about the suffering and death of the Servant, nor
is there anything to do with atonement. The prophet is concerned
about the Servant and he is demonstrating that the Servant was
entirely innocent, and must of necessity prosper abundantly. The 597
B.C. exiles were the good figs, and those that remained behind in
Jerusalem were Jeremiah's bad figs and Ezekiel's 'house of rebellion.'
After (lit. away from) his suffering (trouble) the Servant will see
light 3); this means the light of life. His humiliation will give full

1) As NORTH points out (SI, p. 243) C~ can be translated this way, Num. 36 4.
2) See 'The sin-offering and the guilt-offering,' VT XV, pp. 73-80. Also, DE
VAUX, Ancient Israel (Eng. tr. 1961) pp. 420 f. makes a distinction between the
sacrifice for sin and what he calls 'the sacrifice of reparation.'
3) So LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
 CHAPTER FIVE 197

satisfaction and the righteous one, my Servant, will be vindicated to

the great ones, for it was the penalty for their iniquities that he bore.
(Lit. one will be satisfied with his humiliation-same verb as in v. 3-
and one will vindicate the righteous one). Then in v. 12 we have the
climax: God will grant him to share the spoils of victory with the great
and strong ones. After all, he poured out his life in death and he was
reckoned with the rebels; but it was the punishment for the sin of the
many (great) that he bore and he took the place of the rebels (he
intercepted). It is unfortunate that the English Versions, including
RSV, have 'made intercession for' in 53: 12, because this phrase in-
volves conscious and deliberate self-sacrifice for others and a pleading
with God on their behalf. No one would dream that the same verb
(and also the hiph<il form) is used in v. 6 and there translated 'laid on
him.' We hold that the verb should be translated in the same way in
both cases.
But who is 'my people' in v. 8? We deprecate reading the plural
here or translating as though the word is in the plural. We maintain
that the meaning is my people Israel, the sinful Israel of the days
before 597 B.C., the bad figs. The Servant is the innocent victim of
their rebellious apostasy, the 597 B.C. exiles, but tending, perhaps
here, to include all the exiles.
Isaiah 54: 1-10. This section tells of the repopulation of a deserted
Zion-Jerusalem. Not only will the city itself be full but it will be
overcrowded. Her posterity will take possession of (lZi'"' used in
Joshua of the occupation of Palestine) of the lands of the Gentiles.
God's desertion of Jerusalem was temporary. He will nevermore
leave her, nor will He ever cease from His steadfast love and care for
her. The picture is continued in vv. 11-17 with a glorious picture of
prosperity and freedom from oppression. Once more the nationalistic
element is supreme. At the very least it must be allowed that here the
prophet's concern is for the resurgent Israel alone.
Isaiah 55: 1-5. God's free gift is offered to the new Israel, a pre-
figurement of the New Testament doctrine of grace. The ancient
promises, the covenant with David will be renewed and made firm for
ever. This new Israel is to be a witness to the Gentiles, and he will be a
leader and a commander of the peoples. Israel will summon to his
presence unknown nations, and nations who now do not know
Israel will hurry to answer his summons. All this will be because
Israel's God, YHVH, has glorified him.
198 N. H. SNAITH

Isaiah 55: 6-13. This last section of the sixteen chapters, 40-55, is a
call to repentance. Come now and come quickly whilst the opportunity
is here. Let the wicked leave his wicked way: let the evil man leave his
evil devices-let him turn in repentance to God who is full of mercy
and pardons to the uttermost. God's ways are not our ways, and His
thoughts are not our thoughts. He has a different way of doing things,
but be sure that His purposes will surely be accomplished. And so
(vv. 12 f.) the return home to Zion will be a glorious march through
a transformed world. All nature rejoices in this new day. Instead of the
thorns and briers of the desert there will be a veritable tree garden
like the paradises of the Persian kings.
There remain the three additional chapters, 60-62, which we hold
to be the work of the Second Isaiah.
Chapter 60. Here the glory and splendour of the restored, repopulated
city is joyously extolled in language which almost amounts to idealistic
extravagance. Everywhere else on earth and covering all the Gentiles
there will be darkness, thick obscuring cloud, but for the new Israel
there will be a new dawn and the glory of the LORD will shine out
upon them like the rising sun (niT is used regularly of the speedy
brightening of the sunrise). This' glory' of God is His splendour "~:l,
the haze of dazzling light which surrounds Him. It is the magnificence
and splendour of the eastern prince magnified a thousandfold. Nations
and kings will come to the bright light of this sunrise. Here (v. 4)
they all come, the Gentiles come from every direction, carrying Israel's
own children. All the wealth and plenty of land and sea will come to
Israel; camels laden with gold and frankincense, flocks and rams from
the desert tribes, all for the service of the altar in the glorious Temple
that shall rise. Here they come (v. 8) like clouds of doves. The Gentiles
(lit. isles) wait (mp; cf. 51: 5) to bring Zion's children home with
quantities of gold and silver. In verses 10-14 we get the complete
subservience of the Gentiles. The foreigners are to build the walls,
their kings are to be attendants. The gates of the city will be open
night as well as day because of the continual inflow of wealth from
the Gentiles and the Gentile kings among the train of captives. Zion
will have absolute control over all, and all former oppressors will
bow at Zion's feet in abject humility. The prophet continues this
glorious description of Zion ruling all the Gentiles (to v. 18). The
chapter concludes with the promise of a speedy exaltation and pros-
perity beyond the dreams of normal men.
 CHAl>TER FIVE 199

Isaiah 61: 1-9. This has been called a secondary Servant Song. The
speaker has been anointed to proclaim a day of freedom and joy.
The word 'anointed' does not of necessity involve an actual anointing:
the anointed one is one chosen by God for a particular purpose
(cf. 45: 1). Verse 1 speaks of release from captivity... and the end of
the exile (p. 143). The ruined cities are to be rebuilt. Israel will all be
priests and ministers of God, whilst the Gentiles will do all the menial
work. The people of God will receive a doubled recompence (61: 7;
cf. 40: 2) and all the world will acknowledge their superiority.

Isaiah 61: 10-11. The speaker is either the Zion of the future (Targum,
etc.) or the Servant (Delitzsch, etc.), but this represents no difference
of opinion, since both become one. The Servant grows into the New
Israel, and it is this New Israel which is to rebuild and restore Zion.
Once more we have a strongly nationalist attitude. All the Gentiles
will see the vindication and triumph of Isarel.

Isaiah 62: 1-4. The restoration of Zion-Jerusalem has yet to come.

The prophet refuses to be silent till the promises are fulfilled, until
Zion's prosperity shines out with the brightness of a flaring torch in
the darkness. Then the Gentiles and their kings will see Zion's
success and splendour. There is nothing about the Gentiles having
any share in all this. Zion is to have a new name: Hephzibah: 'all my
delight is in her' or perhaps 'all my purpose is fulfilled in her.' The
land is to have a new name: Beulah; married, happy and fruitful.
There will be a complete change and a new beginning.

Isaiah 62: 6-9. Once more the triumph of Jerusalem, and its glorious
future is yet to come. The 'watchmen on the walls' are the prophets
who will never cease proclaiming their message. They will constantly
bring the LORD's promises to His remembrance. They will give Him
no rest until the promises are fulfilled. The day is bound to come when
Israel eats her firstfruits once again in the Temple Courts. This is
according to the rules of Deut. 12: 17 f., before the time when the
firstfruits became the perquisite of the priests, as they did in the post-
exilic period.

Isaiah 62: 10-12. The conclusion of the prophet's messages is the

actual entrance through the city gates. The exiles are pictured return-
ing to Jerusalem and they are 'The holy people,' the redeemed of the
LORD. This message has been proclaimed to the end of the earth
200 N. H. SNAITH

(cf. the phrase 'light of Gentiles'), and the message is not a worldwide
salvation of all peoples, but the world-wide salvation of the people of
God, the 'daughter of Zion.' The stage is now plainly and clearly set
for the development of the exclusive nationalism of post-exilic
Judaism.
 CHAPTER SIX

JESUS THE SERVANT OF THE LORD

One aspect of the career of the Servant sometimes neglected is the

suddenness of his triumph and the astonishment which this triumph
occasions. This is because the Servant is hidden and obscure till the
moment of triumph comes.
The great ones of earth were appalled at the dreadful plight of
the Servant (52: 14). He was battered and bruised, and scarcely
looked like a human being at all. They are equally amazed at his
complete triumph and success: see p. 194. They spring quickly to
their feet at the sudden appearance of the triumphant one, and they
clasp their hands over their mouths to keep silence before him; cf.
41: 1. They never thought to see what they have seen; they have
realised something the like of which they had never heard. The
Servant of rulers has astonishingly become the ruler of kings.
The first of the so-called Servant songs (42: 1-4) speaks first of the
choice of the Servant and his destiny, which is to bring judgment to
the Gentiles. It explains that it is the quiet, the silent, the unpublicised
one who is to establish the LORD's justice. The Servant makes no
commotion. He does not shout. He does not raise his voice (Targum,
'roar'), nor does he make his voice to be heard in the street. He is a
crushed, though not broken, reed. He is a wick faintly burning, but
not extinguished. Now there comes a change. He will not burn faintly,
nor will he be crushed r;'~, but will be strong and will burn brightly
till he has established justice in the earth, and for his law (for him to
declare his law) the isles (Gentiles) shall wait. Here we have the initial
silence and weakness of the Servant, and then the unexpected but
complete success. The same original silence and the subsequent con-
trast are seen in 42: 14: 'I have for a long time held my peace; I have
been still and have restrained myself. (Now) I will cry out like a woman
in travail; I will gasp and pant at the same time.'
In 46: 3 f. we find the picture of the long delayed birth and at long
last the delivery of the new-born child, the new Israel (p. 164). But the
surprise at the sudden appearance of the Servant and the unexpected
transformation of the one who is despised and abhorred is seen not
only in 52: 13-15, but clearly in chapter 53 (pp. 194-197). In 53: 1-3 the
202 N. H. SNAITH

whole emphasis is on the surprise and unexpectedness of the exaltation

of the Servant. The silence of the Servant is emphasised in verse 7.
He was harshly treated, brutally like a slave, and humiliated, but he
never opened his mouth. He was silent like a sheep led to the slaughter
and the ewe before her shearers, and all this in spite of being taken
away because of an unjust verdict. But the silent one emerges tri-
umphant.
In chapter 49, the silence and then the unexpected and sudden
triumph of the Servant are plain to see. God made the Servant as a
sharp sword, but He hid him in the shadow of His hand (verse 2).
He made him as a polished arrow, but He hid him in His quiver. Here
we have the picture of the Servant, chosen, called, prepared, tho-
roughly equipped, but hidden and kept secret. Verse 5 begins with
;'Tl:s7, 'and NOW saith the LORD ... ' It is true that often ;'Tl:s7, (and
now) is used in that loose, almost meaningless way in which the word
'now' is used at the beginning of an opening sentence in modern
English, or as the inevitable 'well' with which almost everyone begins
to answer a question in a radio interview. But this is not so in these
chapters of the Second Isaiah, especially when there is a contrast
inherent in the context and where that contrast is being emphasised.
The 'now' is to be shouted loudly and clearly. It is NOW that the
Servant is to shine out like a light throughout the darkling world.
Some scholars have seen in 45: 14-17 a reference to Cyrus, mostly
because of 43: 3, but we agree with WHITEHOUSE and NORTH that
the reference is to Israel, and that the submission of Egypt, Ethiopia
and the Sabeans is to Israel; see p. 159. In this case God hides Himself
in Israel, the reviled, the despised Servant, of whom nobody expected
anything. Another passage which speaks of submissive humiliation
and insult is 50: 4-9; see p. 191.
These passages have been mentioned because of their references
to the silence of the Servant and his sudden, unexpected exaltation
and triumph. But there are other indications of a sudden bursting
forth, an unexpected breaking through. These are to be found in
the prophet's use of the metaphor of light. The usual Western use of
the metaphor of light is brightness, illumination, with an easy transi-
tion to its use as a metaphor for Knowledge: e.g. Dominus illuminatio
mea. But the general biblical conception of light is a blazing forth,
not a shining light, but a light that shines out. The picture is mostly
drawn from the uprush of the dawn. It is not for nothing that Usha
is a favourite name for a girl in India. The root .,'N does not mean
 CHAPTER SIX 203

'be light' so much as 'become light,' 'lighten up.' The verb is used
five times in all in the qal: four, of the shining of the sun at dawn,
Gen. 44: 3; 1 Sam. 29: 10: Provo 4: 18; Isa. 60: 1; and once of
Jonathan's eyes brightening up after food, 1 Sam. 14: 27 and 29
(Qere). The same usage is found in the niph<al, 2 Sam. 2: 32 of day-
break; Job 33: 30 of the revival of life; Ps. 76: 5 (Eng. 4) of the
shining forth of the majestic splendour of the LORD. All instances of
the use of the hiph'il are necessarily of shining forth, of sending out
light. In the case of the noun, we have the frequent phrase 'P:JJ"I ,,~
'the shining forth of the light of the dawn,' Jg. 16: 2; 1 Sam. 14: 36;
25: 34, 36; 2 Sam. 17: 22; 2 Kgs. 7: 9; Mic. 2: 1. Also of the dawn,
2 Sam. 23: 4; Jg. 19: 26 (cf. 25); Job 24: 14; Neh. 8: 3 and so forth,
often metaphorically of the shining out of light. This shining forth
of light is a figure for the joyful experience of a sudden salvation, so
that Ps. 27: 1 does not refer to the illumination of the mind, but to the
salvation of the soul. The common word for 'morning' is 'R.~; the
root means 'to cleave.' It is properly the first light of the morning, that
which cleaves the darkness of night. The words which accompany ,,~
are n'T (shine forth), Ps. 97: 11 probably; 112: 4; Isa. 58: 8; 58: 10;
and J"Ill (shine, beam: in the Targum nOf1ehii' is the planet Venus),
Isa. 9: 1 (Eng. 2); Hab. 3: 4; Job 22: 28; Provo 4: 18. A third root
is 37!:l' (shine out, send out beams), Job 37: 15.
Other verses which relate to the sudden shining out of light are
Isa. 58: 8, 'then shall thy light be cleft 37P:J' like the dawn': Isa. 60: 1,
'rise, shine out ",~ for thy light ,,~ has come; and the glory of the
LORD has shone forth n.,T upon thee'; Isa. 60: 3, 'and nations shall
come to thy light .,,~, and kings to the bright beams J"Ill of thy shining
forth n.,T (sunrise)'.
The frequent use of the metaphor of the sudden breaking of the
dawn and the uprush of light is seen in the LXX rendering of n~~.
This word is the 'shoot out of the stock of David,' Jer. 23: 5; 33: 15;
Zech. 3: 8; 6: 12. It is a figure taken from the culture of the vine.
Israel is the vine, Isa. 5; Ps. 80: 9, 15; Ezek. 17; etc., and the
Messianic king is the new shoot out of the old vine stock. Nothing
looks so dead as last years' vine stock, cut back to the point where
it has been cut back year after year, and all gnarled and wrinkled and
old. But the new shoot is virgin green and few shoots grow at a
faster rate. In LXX this figure is wholly unrecognised, and the Syriac
meaning of the root n~~ is followed, so that the meaning is not the
springing up of the new shoot of the vine as in the Hebrew, but the
204 N. H. SNAITH

springing up of the dawn. Thus the noun n~~ of the Hebrew become
the &.VOC"OA~ (dawn) of the LXX. The Messiah becomes 'the dayspring
from on high,' Lk. 1: 78.
We turn to Jesus of Nazareth and the concept of the Servant of
the LORD. In Jesus and the Servant (1959), Miss M. D. HOOKER
discusses the 'influence of the servant concept of Deutero-Isaiah
in the New Testament.' As we view the matter, she is much more in
the right than those with whom she disagrees, but not wholly right.
Her conclusion is summed up in the blurb: 'although the primitive
(Christian) community found the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah
relevant to the kerygma . .. there is no evidence that the (servant)
concept ever occupied any prominent position in their thought.' We
would say that the whole discussion starts off in confusion. 'Servant'
is taken to mean 'suffering servant.' We agree with Miss HOOKER that
the concept of the Suffering Servant had little place in the thought
of the primitive Church, that is, the concept of the Servant with the
chief emphasis on the suffering. It had even less place in the mind of
Jesus Himself, certainly with all the inferences and overtones which
the phrase normally carries. The very phrase 'suffering servant' is a
mistake in that it conveys a false impression of the theme and purpose
of the Second Isaiah. We have sought to show that the Servant is the
Triumphant Servant. The purpose of Isaiah 53 is not to provide a
prophecy of or an apology for the sufferings of Christ. The purpose
was to explain away the sufferings of the Servant, to show that they
ought not to have been his at all. The prophet would say, if we are
going to form a true estimate of the future of the Servant and what on
all counts his fate should be, then we must cut the sufferings alto-
gether out of our thinking. His sufferings were illogical. The logical
outcome of his life and deeds is triumph. The suffering ought to have
fallen on the 'bad figs' of Jerusalem, and none at all on the 'good
figs' of the 597 B.C. deportation. It is misleading to say that the suf-
fering of the Servant was vicarious, because so often this word carries
atonement ideas, 'on behalf of' or 'deliberately instead of.' We do
not find in Isaiah 53 anything to do with ideas of atonement. The
suffering was an interlude in the life of the Servant. It was an illogical
interruption of the proper course of events. He suffered as a result of
the sinful rebellion of the old Israel. It is because he was innocent
that he must necessarily triumph. His sufferings were indeed an OWN,
but not in any sense in which the so-called guilt-offering is usually
understood. They were a substitute; he paid the penalty of their
 CHAPTER SIX 205

sins. This was not in order that the guilty might go free. It is just a fact
that he did suffer the consequences of sins that were not his.
We hold that the concept of the Servant occupied a dominant
place in the mind of Jesus and of the primitive Christian community.
The concept of the Servant of the LORD is: He was hidden, despised,
nowhere to lay his head, suffering, but necessarily triumphant at
last. It is the triumph that is the really important element: the re-
surrection from the death of the exile. Jesus, we hold, deliberately
modelled His whole ministry on this concept of the Servant. This is
why He wrought His miracles of healing, preached to the poor, opened
the eyes of the blind, urged silence about His Messiahship, suddenly
appeared in Jerusalem and looked confidently forward to triumph even
though it was beyond and after condemnation and death.
According to Lk. 4: 16 f. the official opening of the ministry was
in the synagogue at Nazareth, where Jesus read Isa. 61: 1,2 as
far as 'the acceptable year of the LORD.' Either He chose the passage
Himself, or, if the passage was already a fixed Haftarah (Reading
from the Prophets), then the Sabbath was the first in the month
Sivan in the second year of the three-year cycle of the lectionary. I)
Either way the choice of the passage was deliberate. Having con-
cluded the reading, which was the normal length for the first official
Haftarahs, He said, 'Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your
ears.' The opening of His ministry, then, is said by Luke to be the
fulfilment of the prophecy. This is the advent of the Servant of the
LORD. It is true that the word 'Servant' is not actually mentioned in
Isaiah 61, but the characteristic phraseology is unmistakable, so much
so that some who cling to the idea of four Servant Songs find them-
selves thinking of these verses as a secondary Servant song (pp. 169 f.).
According to M t. 11: 2-6 (Lk. 7: 18-23) John the Baptist sent two
of his disciples-two because they were to be witnesses: Dt. 17: 6;
19: 15; 1 Kg. 21: 10; Mt. 18: 16; etc.-to ask Jesus whether or not
He was 'He that cometh.' Apparently Jesus made no immediate
verbal reply, but took them with Him that day. They saw that He
'cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits: and on many that
were blind He bestowed sight,' Lk. 7: 21, and as both evangelists say,
He told them to tell John what they had seen and heard: 'the blind
receive their sight (LXX in Isa. 61: 1 f.) and the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up,
1) See further, 'The Triennial Cycle and the Psalter,' ZAW x 3/4 (1933), pp.
302-307.

Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 14

206 N. H. SNAITH

and the poor have good tidings preached to them,' Mt. 11: 5. These
healings are evidently proof that Jesus was the Servant of the LORD
but this means the Messianic Servant, because Jesus proceeds forth-
with to identify John the Baptist with the messenger of Mal. 3: 1, the
forerunner of the Messiah.
There is no attempt in the Gospels to minimise the healing ministry
of Jesus, embarrassing as many moderns find it. It is mentioned
again and again side by side with the preaching and the teaching.
For instance, Mt. 9: 35 not only states that He taught and preached,
but also that He healed 'all manner of diseases and all manner of
sickness.' Again, after having called the two pairs of brothers, Simon
and Andrew, and James and John, Jesus taught and preached through-
out Galilee, and healed every kind of sickness and disease. The evan-
geli~t then says (Mt. 4: 24) that 'the report of him went forth into
all Syria.' This report was not so much because of His preaching and
teaching as because of the healings, since the rest of the verse reads:
'they brought to him all that were sick, holden with divers diseases
and torments, possessed with devils, epileptic and palsied; and he
healed them.' See also Mk. 1: 28: 'and the report of him (the new
teaching and the fact that with authority he commanded even the
unclean spirits and they obeyed him) went out straightway into all
the region of Galilee round about.' In Mt. 8: 17 the account of the
healing of Peter's wife's mother is followed by the healing of the large
crowd at sunset (cf. Mk. 1: 32-34), but Matthew goes on to quote
Isa. 53: 4 in the form 'himself took our infirmities and bare our diseas-
es,' the association being not with the Cross and the Atonement, as
perhaps theologians might expect, but with 'casting out the spirits
with a word and healing all that were sick.'
Indeed, it is the healing ministry of Jesus which is usually cited as
proof of the coming of the kingdom. See Lk. 11: 20: 'if I by the
finger of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God come unto
you'. Also see Lk. 10: 17-20: where the seventy return full of joy
especially that the devils were subject to them and Jesus replies
'I behold Satan fallen as lightning from heaven', i.e. we have got the
devil on the run; he is beaten. In Lk. 9: 43 the healing of the epileptic
boy (unclean spirit) is evidence of the majesty of God. It is mostly
Luke who presents the aspect that the casting out of devils is fighting
against Satan and his counter-kingdom of evil, but Matthew 15: 29-31
(Mark 7: 31-37) includes the most extensive healings of every type
and at the end he adds 'and they glorified the God of Israel.' So also
 CHAPTER SIX 207

in the case of the sick of the palsy (Lk. 5: 25) and all the crowd who
were there (Mk. 2: 12; Mt. 9: 8; Lk. 5: 26). Another case is that of
the widow's son at Nain (Lk. 7: 16): 'and fear took hold on all: and
they glorified God saying, A great prophet is arisen among us: and
God has visited his people.' Throughout the Gospels the heatings
are emphasised at least as much as the teaching and preaching.
Mt. 12: 22 f. is important. Here Jesus heals a man who was blind
and dumb. All the crowds are amazed and they say 'Is not this the
son of David?' This is an extraordinary conclusion to draw. Why
should the healing of a blind and dumb man prove that Jesus is the
son of David? It is because Jesus is fulfilling Isa. 61: 1 f. healing the
sick, preaching good tidings to the poor, and because the Servant
triumphs and rules, He is the Messiah also.
The conception of Messiah according to Jesus was not that of a
suffering Messiah as against a Triumphant Messiah, but a suffering-
triumphant Messiah as against a triumphant Messiah. The difference
is in His interpolation, so to speak, of the suffering. This is a result of
His identifying Himself in such detail with the Servant of the LORD,
but it is important so far as Jesus and the primitive Church is con-
cerned, never to mention the suffering without referring also to the
Triumph.
It is essential to include and emphasise the triumph, equally in the
words of Jesus as in the words of the Second Isaiah. When, according
to the Gospel traditions, Jesus referred specifically to His approaching
death, he also referred to His resurrection. See Mt. 17: 22 f., where it
is said that while Jesus yet abode in Galilee, he told them that the Son
of Man would be 'delivered up into the hands of man, and they shall
kill him, and the third day he shall be raised up.' These may not be the
exact words of Jesus Himself, but they certainly form part of the
earliest Christian tradition, according to which the climax was not the
Crucifixion but the Resurrection. See also Mt. 20: 17-19: 'the Son of
Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and scribes; and they
shall condemn him to death and shall deliver him to the Gentiles
to mock and to scourge and to crucify; and the third day he shall be
raised up.' Note the inclusion of the mocking and scourging, both
of which are part of the picture of the humiliated, maltreated Servant.
See also the parallel Mk. 10: 32-34; Lk. 18: 32 f.; and the post-
Transfiguration passages, Mt. 16: 21 andLk. 9: 22. Here (Mk. 9: 9-12)
we find a reference to the time 'when the Son of Man should have
risen again from the dead' and also that it is 'written of the Son of
208 N. H. SNAITH

Man that he should suffer many things and be set at nought' which
could possibly be Ps. 22: 6 f., though it is more likely to be Isa.
53: 2 f' J but why the title 'Son of Man?'
A very great deal has been written about this title 'the Son of Man'
...nd its connexion with Jesus of Nazareth, and for details of these
long discussions reference must be made to the work of students of
the New Testament. It has often been pointed out that in the Gospel
according to Saint Mark, the use of the title is associated with suf-
fering and that the title appears when Jesus first refers to His appro-
aching sufferings and death-except, that is, for 2: 10 \ sick of the
palsy) and 2: 28 (Lord of the Sabbath). But it is also true that with the
suffering, the triumph also is mentioned. It is therefore just as true to
say that when Jesus begins to refer to His ultimate triumph, He
begins to use the phrase Son of Man, as it is to say that it is when He
begins to talk about His suffering. It is as unexpected that the Son
of Man shall suffer as it is that Messiah shall suffer. There is no direct
link between the Son of Man and suffering any more than there is
between Messiah and suffering. Both titles belong to the world of
triumph. It was not because of His suffering that Jesus claimed to be
the Messiah; it was in spite of it. It was not because of suffering that
Jesus took upon HimselF) the title Son of Man, but in spite of it.
The Servant suffers and dies, but he rises again. Jesus must suffer,
must die, but He must rise again. Both the Servant and the Son of
Man are to triumph and judge many nations. To triumph and to rule
is the destiny of the Son of Man both in Daniel 7 and in the Book of
Enoch. Both the Servant of the Second Isaiah and the 'one like unto
a son of man' of Dn. 7: 13, 22 are figures of speech for a new Israel,
the conquering saints of the Most High, triumphant over all peoples
and nations. This is why Jesus is the Servant and this is why Jesus is
the Son of Man. But first in both cases come humiliation and suf-
fering and death. This is what Jesus added to the pattern both of
Messiah and of Son of Man. See Lk. 24: 26 f.: 'Behoved it not the
Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning
from Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the
scriptures the things concerning himself.' This we take to mean,
not that He had to prove to them that He was Messiah, but that Mes-

1) Did Jesus actually use this title of Himself? Or did it become used of Him
in the early post-resurrection traditions and so used at an early date as an alter-
native title to denote His triumph? just as the title 'Lord' (kttrios) came to be used
of Him.
 CHAPTER SIX 209

siah had to suffer and die first before He could achieve the triumph
which is essentially His.
We hold that Jesus deliberately modelled His ministry on the
concept of the Servant of the LORD of the Second Isaiah. 'This is
why the healing, the preaching to the poor takess 0 large and prom-
inent a place in the Gospel traditions. Indeed John goes so far as to
treat the miracles as signs: 'this beginning of his signs O''fJfLdoc did
Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory,' J n. 2: 11. He
certainly deliberately fulfilled Scripture on the first Palm Sunday.
He rode on the ass, which is Zc. 9: 9. He appeared suddenly in the
Temple: the journey begins in Mk. 9: 30, and according to Mk. 11: 11
He went straight into the 'Temple, looked round on all things, and
then went straight out; this is Mal. 3: 1: 'and the LORD whom ye
seek, shall suddenly come to his temple.' Again, the day was the first
day of the Passover Week. If the Psalter was already recited one
psalm each Sabbath to correspond to a triennial system of reading the
Law, then Psalm 2 was the proper psalm for the second Sabbath of
Nisan in the first year. Jesus entered Jerusalem riding the ass on the
day following this Sabbath. All men knew that the Messiah would
appear at Passover: see the LXX of Jer. 31: 8 (in' the feast of Passover'
for 'with them the blind and the lame').
'This reference to Jer. 31: 8 brings to mind the curious statement of
Mt. 21: 14, where it is stated that on the occasion of the cleansing
of the Temple (according to the Synoptists, the next day after the
Entry) 'the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he
healed them.' 'The Hebrew of Jer. 31: 8 is 'Behold I will bring them ...
with them the blind and the lame,' which, as we saw immediately
above, becomes in LXX 'in the festival of Passover' (no~ ilm,,~ for
no~, ,,:17 c~). Apparently the evangelist knew the double reading,
just as in Mt. 27: 3-10, the story of what happened to the thirty pieces
of silver which Judas Iscariot received. There was a discussion on the
part of the chief priests as to whether this money should go into the
temple treasury or not, and they decided in the end to use it to buy
'the potter's field.' Zc. 11: 13 is quoted, though the reference given is
Jeremiah. The Zechariah passage actually is: 'Cast it unto the potter
('~'\ but the Syriac has 'treasury' as if reading '~'N. LXX has
chOnettterion 'smelting furnace') ... ' and 'and cast them unto the potter
(Syriac again 'treasury') in the house of the LORD.' 'The two inter-
pretations are actually in the Hebrew text, for how could there be a
potter in the temple? 'There could be a treasury, and there was. It is
210 N. H. SNAITH

hard to explain all this, but it is plain that the evangelist knew of the
double exegesis of Zc. 11: 13. Perhaps LOISY was right when long
ago he suggested that the first evangelist was the 'scribe who hath
been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven ... which bringeth
forth out of his treasure things new and old,' Mt. 13: 52.
One of the strange features of the Gospel story, common to all
three synoptists, is the double tradition concerning the miracles:
did Jesus seek publicity, or did he seek to avoid it? It has been the
fashion to say that Jesus did not want to be known as a miracle worker,
but rather as teacher and preacher. This is said with particular reference
to the healing miracles, concerning some of which He enjoined silence.
This is not the overall picture we get from the Gospels. There are
indeed times when Jesus expressly bids the healed one not to broad-
cast the story of the healing, but the general picture is one of healings
everywhere, with the people rejoicing in them as visible signs of the
coming of the kingdom, of the manifested power and glory of God.
This is what we would expect after the announcement in the syna-
gogue in Nazareth, Lk. 4: 16-19. There was one occasion when Jesus
told the cured man to tell all his friends and relations what the LORD
had done for him. This was the man who had been possessed by the
legion of devils (Mk. 5: 19; Lk. 8: 39, but not Mt. 8: 28-32, where
two sufferers are mentioned and no legion). The incident took place on
the south-east shore of the Lake, in Decapolis, which at that time was
an area mostly, if not entirely, east of the Jordan. The fact that this
incident took place east of the Jordan is not the explanation for the
command, because the healing of the deaf man who also had an im-
pediment in his speech also took place in Decapolis (Mk. 7: 31-37),
and 'he charged them that they should tell no man.' Certainly Herod
Antipas knew Him as a miracle worker (Lk. 23: 8), whilst the Greek
has O'1J[J.e;~ov (sign), the word used regularly of healing miracles in the
fourth gospel.
It is on record that Jesus many times urged silence. Why did He
do this, when at the same time it is clear that healing the sick was part
of the proof of His claim to be the anointed one (Is. 61: i)? When
He sent out the twelve (Mk. 6: 7; Mt. 10: 1 ; Lk. 9: 1) and the seventy
(Lk. 10: 1 f.), He gave them power over unclean spirits and to cure
diseases, and even (Lk. 10: 9) to 'heal the sick. .. and say to them,
The Kingdom of God is come nigh to you.'
Our explanation is that both as the healer of sicknesses and in the
silence He sometimes commanded, Jesus is following the pattern of
 CHAPTER SIX 211

the Servant of the LORD of the Second Isaiah. He is the hidden

Servant, the silent Servant, suddenly to be made manifest and ul-
timately, after suffering and death, to triumph. This is the explanation
of the so-called Messianic secret. It is actually stated in Mt. 12: 16 ff. :
'and many followed him; and he healed them all, and charged them
that they should not make him known: that it might be fulfilled .. .'
and then Is. 42: 1-3 is quoted: '(my servant) shall not strive, cry
aloud, neither shall anyone hear his voice in the streets.' The two
necessities tended to cut across each other. On the one hand He had to
proclaim His identity with the anointed (messianic) servant by His
miracles of healing and by bringing good tidings to the poor; on the
other hand, He sought to conform to the pattern of the Servant, who
before His unexpected triumph was to be obscure, silent and dumb.
The commands for silence are frequent. In Mk. 1: 34: 'He suffered
not the devils to speak because they knew him' (BW f 1 f 28 add 'to
be Christ'; f 13 £700 etc. 'to be the Christ'; cf. Lk. 4: 41). The
order to tell no one that He is the Messiah (Christ) is plain elsewhere.
In Mt. 16: 20 He gives this order to the disciples. This is immediately
after the declaration by Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi. The parallel
in Lk. 9: 22 agrees with this, but the Marcan account introduces a
qualification (Mk. 9: 9) by saying that they are to keep silent until
after the Resurrection. Both Matthew and Luke represent Jesus as
saying to the disciples that the Son of Man must go up to Jerusalem,
suffer many things, be killed and rise again. Luke adds 'be rejected.'
Both Matthew 16: 28 and Luke 9: 22 conclude with the statement that
some of them standing there shall in no wise taste of death 'till they see
the Son of Man coming in his kingdom' (Luke, 'see the kingdom of
God'), which means) not the final judgment with the Son of Man
coming on the clouds of heaven, but the triumph of the silent,
hidden, suffering, dying Servant of the LORD.
In Mt. 17: 9 on the way down from the Mount of Transfiguration,
Jesus commands the disciples to tell no man the vision (Mk. 9: 9,
'what they had seen') till the Son of Man be risen from the dead.
This vision was of Moses and Elijah, the two traditional witnesses
to the Messiah. Lk. 9: 36 simply says 'and they held their peace, and
told no man in those days any of the things which they had seen.'
Similar to this is Mk. 3: 12, where the unclean spirits 'fell down
before Him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.' Whereupon
Jesus charged them not to make him manifest (Mt. 12: 16). Compare
the two stories in Mt. 9: 27-31 and 20: 29-34 respectively. The two
212 N. H. SNAITH

stories both concern two blind men who received their sight, and the
other common factor is that both pairs cry out after Jesus, 'Have mercy
upon us, thou son of David.' In the earlier story Jesus commands them
to see to it that nobody knows of the cure (9: 30). In the second story
Jesus makes no such demand. The Marcan parallel to the second story
is that of blind Bartimaeus (Mk. 10: 32-34. Did the one become two
because of the name? son of a twin), and here also there is no com-
mand to silence. This last incident took place towards the end of the
last journey when Jesus had already left Jericho. Perhaps the reason
for the difference is that the climax is near when the secret is to be
made known. Other cases of silence enjoined after healing are Mk.
8: 22-26 (the blind man at Bethsaida: 'do not even enter into the
village'), and Mk. 5: 43. This latter case is that of the raising of Jairus's
daughter. Nowhere are the two contradictions more evident, for Luke
confirms the charge for silence (8: 56), whilst Matthew says 'and the
fame thereof went forth into all the land' (9: 26).
The command to the lepers for silence is probably part of the same
pattern of silence on the part of the hidden messianic Servant, though
here there may possibly be a taboo reason. The men will not be
ceremonially nor civicly clean until the priest has examined them and
satisfied himself that the leprosy is dead, Mk. 1 : 44; Mt. 8: 4; Lk. 5: 14.
The other passage which tells of a leprosy cure is that of the ten lepers,
one of whom was a Samaritan. Here the questions of silence and of
broadcasting do not arise. The story is concerned with something
else: the fact that it was the Samaritan alone who came back to say
'Thank you.' But why in so many instances was it expected that the
son of David should heal the sick and make the blind to see, unless it
was because of Isa. 61: 1 f. and Jesus following the pattern of the
Servant?
But what is most remarkable of all is the silence of Jesus at the
trials. Before Caiaphas Jesus uttered not a word (Mt. 26: 63; Mk.
14: 61) until He was put on oath. When He was thus forced to speak,
He said 'Thou sayest' (an admission, Mt. 26: 64) or 'I am' (Mk. 14: 62).
According to Lk. 22: 67 f. he answered with what appears to be a
popular saying:
'If I tell you, you will not believe:
If I ask you, you will not answer.'
But later, under pressure (v. 70), He says, 'You say I am.' But all
three evangelists agree that Jesus added 'From now on (Mt. cX.7t'&p"n :
 CHAPTER SIX 213

Lk. ano 1"0 vuv; not Mark) you will see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of power (Luke does not have 'you shall see') and (Mat-
thew and Mark) coming on the clouds of heaven.' We suggest that
Luke is right in omitting 'coming on the clouds of heaven.' This is a
later idea. At first the triumph of Jesus was associated with the rising
from the dead. Later His triumph was linked with the idea of the
Heavenly Man, the Son of Man (cf. the Book of Enoch), the judge who
is to come at the End of Days. But what is important here is that Jesus
was silent until Caiaphas forced Him to speak.
Again, in the trial before the governor Jesus adopted the same
attitude. Pilate asked Him if He was the King of the Jews, and Jesus
answered 'Thou sayest' (Mt. 27: 11; Mk. 15: 2; Lk. 23: 3), but when
He was accused by the chief priests and scribes, He kept silence, nor
did He make any further reply to Pilate's questions. Before Herod
Jesus did not utter a single word from first to last, in spite of Herod's
questioning Him in many words (Lk. 23: 9). The chief priests and
the scribes vehemently accused Him. Herod was wanting Him to
work a miracle. But He maintained silence, and they ended by 'setting
him at nought, mocking him and arraying him in gorgeous apparel.'
Why did Jesus keep such silence at the trials, except only to admit
before priests that He was 'the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One'
(Mk. 14: 61)-Matthew has 'the Messiah, the Son of God' (26: 63),
which is the same thing; Luke has the admission that He is the Son of
God (22: 70) which is understandable since Luke was a Gentile,
writing for Gentiles; and before Pilate that He was King of the Jews?
Our answer is that He was following the pattern of the Servant of the
LORD, even as He had followed it all through His ministry. He had
enjoined silence concerning the healings and yet demonstrated by
these and by preaching to the poor that He was the Servant, and all the
time Himself had followed the pattern of the silent, hidden Servant.
The demand for silence at the trials is insisted upon in Isa. 53: 7 f.
'He was brutally treated and humiliated
Yet he did not open his mouth.
Like a sheep that is led to the slaughter
And like an ewe before her shearers,
He was silent and did not open his mouth.
After an oppressive, unjust sentence
He was taken waay, and who was concerned about his fate?
For he was cut off from the land of the living... 1)
1) see p. 195.
214 N. H. SNAITH

Another element in the trials is concerned with the two times

Jesus broke silence. In each case the accusation He admitted as being
true was the one thing which would get Him into trouble in that
particular court. Further, the penalty in each case was death. The only
thing that would get Him into trouble before the High Priest was
the claim that He was Messiah, the Son of God. Whatever this last
phrase meant, it was justified by Ps. 2: 7, blasphemy or no blasphemy.
The only thing that would get Him into trouble in Pilate's court was
the admission that He claimed to be King of the Jews. Before Herod,
He made no admission at all. There was nothing that would bring Him
there under sentence of death. All this leads to the conclusion that
Jesus knew He had to die, just as He knew He must rise again: this
is the pattern of the Servant of the LORD which He was following.
'Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His
glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he
interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself'
(Lk. 24: 26 f.).
Lk. 22: 35-38 is a curious passage. It contains a quotation from
Isa. 53: 12 'and he was numbered with the rebels' (see p. 197). Jesus
tells the disciples to change their ways entirely: the man who has no
purse or wallet is to take one, and the man who has no sword is to
sell his cloak and buy one. This is because He must be numbered
with the rebels, and because the time has come for this saying to be
fulfilled. And yet, strangely enough two swords are enough and
in the sequel one of the disciples was rebuked for using the sword
he had (Lk. 22: 49; Mk. 14: 47; Mt. 26: 51). If we follow the usual
translation of 'transgressors,' then we may suppose the evangelist
assumes that the prophecy was fulfilled at the trial, counted with the
transgressors. But if we realise that the root 37!D~ means 'rebel,' then
the prophecy 'he was reckoned with the rebels' is fulfilled by His
being arrested in the company of armed men, albeit it was but a token
armament. It was done 'that the scriptures might be fulfilled,' Mk.
14: 49: they 'came out as against a robber.'
There are elements in the Gospel narratives concerning which
it is difficult to decide how much comes from Jesus Himself and
how much belongs to the early post-resurrection traditions, the time
when men began to tell the story of His life, His death and His
resurrection, all of it with their knowledge of the Servant equation
in their minds. There was the spitting: according to Mk. 14: 65;
Mt. 26: 67 the chief priests and the whole council spat in His face,
 CHAPTER SIX 215

and Mk. 15: 19; Mt. 27: 30 say that the soldiers spat on him. See
Isa. 50: 6. Then there was the scourging, Mk. 15: 15; Mt. 27: 26;
Lk. 23: 22. See Isa. 50: 6 f. and 53: 3 f. Also, in Isa. 53: 9 it is stated
that the Servant was given a grave 'with the wicked and with the
rich "Vil'-l1N in his death.' 1) It has been suggested 2) that in "Vil' we
should see a second root 'Wl' 'his grave with the wicked and his
burial-mound with the corrupt.' But Joseph of Arimathea was a rich
man, and this rich man's grave was the only grave Jesus ever had.
Perhaps 'with the rich' or even 'with a rich man' is right after all.

Christian exegetes have found considerable difficulty over the

apparent reluctance at one stage of Jesus to have dealings with non-
Jews. It is stated in Mt. 10: 5 that, having chosen twelve disciples,
'he sent them forth, and charged them, saying, Go not into any
way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans,
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Then there
follows the list of the signs of the Messianic Servant (Isa. 61: 1 f.).
These they also are to make manifest and to show that 'the king-
dom of heaven is at hand.' The prohibition of any dealings with
Gentiles in general and Samaritans in particular gives the number
twelve special and exclusive significance. When Jesus bade them not
to go to the Gentiles, but definitely to go to the Jews, did He mean
just that? Or are we dealing with some early pro-Jewish and non-
Pauline tradition, such as is evident in the attitude of the Jerusalem
leaders, Acts 11: 1-3; 15: 1-29; Gal. 2? This is not a Matthaean
anti-Gentile bias, as we may see from the story of Zacchaeus, which
we owe entirely to Luke (19: 1-10). Verse 9 is 'And Jesus said unto
him, Today is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a
son of Abraham.' So that when it says in the next verse that the Son of
Man came to seek and to save that which was lost, the presumption
is that here it means every lost son of Abraham. This is a Lucan
tradition, and it was the Gentile Luke who realised as soon as most,
that the Gospel was for the Greek as well as for the Jew. Paul had
realised this long before he met Luke, but there can be little doubt
but that Luke strengthened Paul's convictions on this matter. Yet it
is Luke, and Luke alone, who faithfully records what appears to be a
statement limiting salvation to the Jews. How could he do that unless
1) Or 'his funeral mound'; see BDB 119b with its reference to Ezek. 43: 7
and possibly here also; apparently confirmed by the Dead Sea Scroll, Isaiah A.
2) Reider, VT ii p. 118. This certainly makes a good parallel couplet.
216 N. H. SNAITH

in some way it was firmly embedded in the tradition he received?

The clearest example of this attitude of Jesus is the story of the
Canaanitish (Syro-Phoenician) woman, Mk. 7: 24-30; Mt. 15: 21-28.
According to Mt. 15: 24, the answer which Jesus gave to the woman
was: 'I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel'
(? those that had gone astray like sheep, Isa. 53: 6). This is not in the
Marean parallel, but both evangelists give evidence of marked
reluctance on the part of Jesus to do anything for the woman and her
daughter. Mark says (verse 27) that the children must come first,
but both give the woman's reply (Mk. 7: 27; Mt. 15; 26) to the effect
that even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's (the
children's) table. Whereupon Jesus healed the child forthwith. The
mother's faith was great, and it was this which turned the scale.
Either Jesus was testing the woman (which does not seem to be
altogether a 'Christian' thing to do considering the great stress of
mind of the mother: most of us would not dream of causing the al-
ready distracted woman such unnecessary anxiety), or He meant what
He said. The natural explanation is that He did mean what He said,
and that there was up to this stage in His ministry a pronounced
reluctance to have dealings with non-Jews. He welcomed publicans
and sinners; they were Jews, and He was out against the exclusive
legalism of the scribes, who laid down other conditions than repent-
ance and faith. He did not avoid Samaritans, but an exclusive attitude
is shown in In. 4: 22 f.: 'for salvation is of the Jews'. But there came
to be a change, so the Johanine tradition says, because 'the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship
him.' The Marean saying 'Let the children first be filled' is a less ex-
clusive attitude. It has doubtless prompted the unwarranted introduc-
tion of'also' in the margin of RV in In. 4: 23, but it is reflected in the
way in which Paul and Barnabas went first to the Jews during their
journey in Asia Minor (Acts 13: 5; 13: 46, etc.), and then to the Gen-
tiles when the Jews rejected them. Later Jesus rebuked James and
John who wanted fire to be called down from heaven upon the in-
hospitable Samaritan village (Lk. 9: 52-56), but these were 'sons of
Abraham' even though post-exilic Judaism had interposed barriers
against them because they did not conform to their rules and regula-
tions.
It would appear, therefore, that at first Jesus was nationalist in that
He conceived Himself as bringing salvation to the Jews only. This is,
 CHAPTER SIX 217

we have sought to show,!) the attitude of the Second Isaiah, and we

explain this nationalism on the part of Jesus as part of His deliberate
following the pattern of the Servant of the LORD. But there came a
time when He realised that there could be no such 'middle wall of
partition,' nor any such limits set to the Gospel. It was the incident
of the Syro-Phoenician mother which taught Him this. Nevertheless,
it is plain that the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem after the Re-
surrection and even after Pentecost were strong in their belief that
the Gospel was for Jews only, and they were very slow indeed to
make any compromise on this issue. Indeed, it is likely that only the
destruction of the Temple and with it the virtual elimination of these
exclusive and nationalist Christian Jews prevented Christianity from
remaining a sect within Judaism. But this 'Jews only,' this nationalistic
attitude can be explained, in our view, only on the basis that Jesus
modelled His whole life and ministry on the Servant of the Second
Isaiah, and that this extended at first even to a nationalistic attitude
that it was only for the Jews that salvation was come.
We find in this also the explanation of the fact that the Resurrection
took so prominent a place in the first preaching. This is shown, for
example, in the statement in Acts 17: 18 that the Athenians thought
Paul was 'a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached Jesus and
Anastasis (Resurrection).' See also Acts 17: 32. The absence of em-
phasis in the early preaching of any vicarious, atoning element in the
Cross has puzzled many. We believe with BULTMANN that any such ele-
ments 'were put in his mouth subsequently by the church,' 2) but
we think BULTMANN is mistaken when he says 'The tradition of Jesus's
sayings reveals no trace of a consciousness on his part of being the
Servant of God of Is. 53.' 3) BULTMANN says this because when he
thinks of 'the Servant' he thinks in terms of 'the Suffering Servant.'
Here we believe he is wrong, though this is the general attitude. This
is why H. J. CADBURY finds it 'almost unbelievably' 4) so, that the one
time when Luke quotes Is 53, he 'escapes all the vicarious phrases
with which that passage abounds.' We do not find this omission
surprising at all, because in the sense in which the word 'vicarious'
is generally used (deliberate atoning self-sacrifice) we do not find any-
thing vicarious there at all. In any case, the Gospel and Acts tradition

1) see pp. 154-165.

2) Jesus and the Word (Eng. tr. 1935), p. 214.
3) Theology of the New Testament (Eng. tr. 1952), vol. i, p. 31.
4) 'The Titles of Jesus in Acts' in Beginnings, vol. v, p. 366.
218 N. H. SNAITH

is that the suffering-and-death is mentioned with the resurrection

also, and the whole point is that the Suffering Servant triumphs. We
suspect that the vicarious, atoning emphasis on the sufferings and
death of Jesus developed from the time when men ceased to see the
triumph in the Resurrection and looked forward more and more to a
Second Advent, the time when the Son of Man would come on the
clouds of heaven.
 PART TWO

THE THIRD ISAIAH

CHAPTER SEVEN

EXEGESIS OF CHAPTERS 56-66

Virtually all modern scholars apart from 'conservative evan-

gelicals' 1) agree in the separation of chapters 40-66 from chapters
1-39,2) but there is a much wider division of opinion concerning
chapters 40-66 than is sometimes realised. Some still regard 40-66 as a
unit, notably W. F. ALBRIGHT 3) and FLEMING JAMES 4). They place
the whole section as a unity in the years 540-522 B. C. There is also
C. C. TORREY 5) who regards all references to Cyrus and to Babylon
as interpolations. He holds that 34-35 and 40-66 'form a homogeneous
group and are the work of a single hand' (p. 53). He holds that these
chapters consist of twenty-seven successive poems, written in Pales-
tine, probably in Jerusalem, close to the end of the fifth century B.C.
They have nothing to do with any return from a Babylonian captivity
which is wholly fictional, but have to do with the hope of the gathering
in of the Dispersion. This position is in the main supported by G.
DAHL (1929) and much of it by G. A. BARTON (1938). Others who
maintain the unity of 40-66 are KONIG (1926, all from the exile) and
GLAHN (1934: 40-55 is before and 56-66 after the Return).
The majority of scholars follow DUHM (1892) and K. MARTI (1892)
who held that the Second Isaiah wtote in Babylonia and that another
prophet, the Third Isaiah, wrote chapters 56-66 in Palestine as late
as 457-445 B. c., dates which place him after Ezra's arrival (accepting,
as they did, the earlier date for Ezra) and before Nehemiah arrived.
So also LITTMANN (1899), ZILLESSEN (1906), Box (1908), ELLIGER
(1928), ODEBERG (1931) and SELLIN (1930). HOLSCHER (1914) be-
lieved that 56-66 like 40-55 were written in Egypt. Some think in
terms of one person as the author of 56-66, but find a closer association
1) HERZOG (1915), LIAS (1915 and 1918), KAMINKA (1925), ALLIS (1950).
2) There is a great deal to be said for adding chapter 35 to chapters 40-55 and
60-62.
3) The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (1932), p. 218.
4) Personalities of the Old Testament (1939), p. 363.
6) The Second Isaiah (1928).
220 N. H. SNAITH

than others with chapters 40-55 by saying that the Third Isaiah was a
disciple of the Second Isaiah. ELLIGER (1928 and 1933), for instance,
held that not only was the Third Isaiah a disciple of the Second Isaiah,
but that, besides being responsible for 56-66, he was also responsible
for the revision and publication of 40-55. This view is supported by
MEINHOLD and SELLIN. Both ELLIGER and SELLIN envisage the Third
Isaiah as expanding the work of his master and perhaps incorporating
within 40-55 something of his own, notably 52: 13-53: 12. All of this,
as WEISER rightly points out, makes the Third Isaiah a contemporary
of Haggai and Zechariah 1-8. The period 457-445 B.C. is rather too
late for the activity of such a man: that is, supposing him to have been
an actual face-to-face pupil of the Second Isaiah. The period 457-445
B.C. involves a man of the next or third generation whose mission
was to interpret the Second Isaiah to his own generation who cer-
tainly needed whatever comfort and consolation could be brought to
them.
There are many variations among scholars in their opinions as to
the date and authorship of these chapters 56-66. BLEEK (1859) thought
that in chapters 58 onwards, but certainly in 63-66, we have prophecies
written by the author of 40-55, but at a later date. On the other hand,
STADE (1888) held that 56: 9-57: 13a; 58: 13-59: 21 and 62-66 could
scarcely be from the hand of the Second Isaiah in their present form.
BUDDE (1891) thought that 56-59 and perhaps 61 and 63-64 were later
than other elements in 40-66, whilst KUENEN (1889) made 50-51 and
54-66 later than the rest. And so we come to the positions held by
many scholars that 56-66 are not all by the same author, and indeed
may be by many authors: CHEYNE (1901), KOSTERS (1896), CRAMER
(1905), BUDDE (1909), BUTTENWIESER (1919), J. MARTY (1924), LEVY
(1925» ABRAMOWSKI (1925), V OLZ (1932), LODS (1935), EISSFELDT
(1934, etc.), KITTEL (1898), WEISER (1961), GRESSMANN (1898),
CORNELL (1900), ZILLESSEN (1904), MOWINCKEL (1925), OESTERLEY
and ROBINSON (1934), ROWLEY (1950) and others. PFEIFFER (1941)
finds innumerable affinities between 40-55 and 56-66, and thinks
in terms of 'one or more authors' dominated in thought and diction
by the author of 40-55. He says that it is the less attractive features of
the Second Isaiah's style that are copied and intensified. Possibly here
he means the nationalistic elements rather than literary style.
Attempts have been made to date particular sections of these 56-66
chapters. EISSFELDT allocates 56-66 as a whole to the years 520-516
B.C., but places 57: 1-13 before 587 B.C.; 63: 7-64: 12 (Heb. 11) soon
 CHAPTER SEVEN 221

after 587 B.C.; 66: 1-4 before 538 B.C.; and 65 to the period 400-200
B.C. With this compare VOLZ, who places 56: 1-8; 57:14-21 ; 58: 1-14;
59: 9 f.; 61 in the period 500-400 B.C.; 56: 9-57: 13 as pre-exilic;
63: 7-64: 12 in c. 585 B.C.; 66: 1 f. as c. 520 B.C.; 63: 1-6 as 500-400
B.C.; and 65 and 66: 3-42 as after 331 B.C. G. W. ANDERSON (1959)
writes of the whole of 56-66 as a collection possibly spanning the
whole period 586-400 B.C. with now and then, as in 58, an echo of
the authentic voice of pre-exilic prophecy. One of the criteria of
judgment running through most of these attempts at dating the
eleven chapters is to be seen in the remark of SKINNER who says 1)
that 63: 7-64: 11 must have been written before the building of Zerub-
babel's temple in 520-516 B.C. If we are to hold that 56-66 is a unity,
then it must all have been written earlier than 520 B.C. If the rest of
56-66 cannot be conceived as being earlier than 520 B.C. then 56-66
is not a unity.
The problem is: Where are these eleven chapters to be fitted in to
an accepted historical framework?

597 B.C. Beginning of the Exile: first deportation.

568 B.C. Destruction of the Temple: second deportation.
581 B.C. Third deportation.
538 B.C. Cyrus captures Babylon.
522-520 B.C. Accession of Darius Hystaspis and consolidation of the
Empire.
520-516 B.C. Rebuilding of the Temple under the leadership of
Zerubbabel and Jeshua encouraged by Haggai and
Zechariah.
445(4 B.C. Nehemiah's arrival in Jerusalem.
432 B.C. Nehemiah's return to Jerusalem.
397 B.C. Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem followed by the complete
triumph of the Habdalah (Separation) policy. Some say
the date is 457 B.C., others 433 (?) B.C.; see pp. 244-261.
331 B.C. Alexander the Great passes by. The Samaritan schism is
at some date between Ezra's arrival and this date.

We proceed to an examination, section by section, of chapters 56-66.

Isaiah 56: 1-2. A most noteworthy feature of these two verses is

1) Isaiah (Camb. Bible, 1917), vol. ii, p. xliv.

Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 15
222 N. H. SNAITH

the mixed nature of verse 1. 'The first half of the verse is a command
to 'observe the ordinance' y,!:)tzj~ ,~tzj and to 'do right' ;,p":s ;,tzj:s:. 'This
parallelism of y,!:)tzj~ and ;,p":s is not true to the Second Isaiah. But the
second half of the verse is definitely true to him: 'for my salvation has
nearly arrived ~':l' ~li:S:'tzj~ ;':l"P and my victory is to be revealed
(made manifest) m,m, ~liP":S.' 'This parallelism of ;':S:'W~ and ;,p":s in
the sense of 'salvation, victory, the triumph of what is right' is
characteristic of the Second Isaiah and the sentiment of the second
half of the verse is essentially his. But the meaning of ;,p":s in the
first half is not its meaning in the second half. 'That 56: 1b is in the
tradition of the Second Isaiah admits of no doubt, but what of 56: 1a?
56: 1a and 56: 2 have associations with Ezek. 20: 19 f. and 11 f. See
also Ezek. 22: 8 and 26. In Ezekiel 20 we find the same association
of observing '~W and doing ;,ill:s: God's c~y,!:)tzj~ (verses 11 and 19:
cf. Dt. 12: 1 etc.) and also the immediate association of this with
keeping the Sabbath holy and not profaning it. In Isa. 56: 2 the test of
the true Israel is to hold fast to the ordinance y,!:)W~. This shows itself
in (a) keeping the Sabbath by not profaning it ,,,;,~ li:lW ,~tzj, and
(b) guarding the hand from doing any evil :s:,-,~ liW}:S:~ ,,,~ '~W. We
are here in the beginnings of that Sabbath strictness by which this
taboo Sabbath became one of the fixed elements and signs of the
covenant. 'The first references to this are apparently in Ezekiel 20 and
22 and thus they belong to the early years of the exile (seventh year:
590 B.C.). The Sabbath is to be a sign m~ between God and Israel
'to know that I the LORD sanctify them' 20: 12. Again and again in
Ezek. 20 (verses 13, 16, 21, 24) the refusal to observe the ordinances
c~y,!:)W~ and in this way walk in God's statutes involves desecrating
the Sabbath.
It was during the exile that the Sabbath became a taboo-day.
Before the exile the Sabbath in old lsrael was a day when it was
permissible to go on a considerable journey, probably because on
that day the ass and his driver were free from ordinary farm duties,
2 Kg. 4: 23. Both the new-month-day tzj"n and the Sabbath were
days when ordinary marketing did not take place (Am. 8: 5). They
were days of mirth (Hos. 2: 11) and special assemblies (Isa. 1: 12),
and were condemned by eighth century prophets for their licentious-
ness and debauchery. Evidently, apart from such abuses, the Sabbath
was a day of joy, and herein is that tradition of joy which is still part
of the Jewish Sabbath in spite of all its restrictions: the Bridal Song
and the fact that no Sabbath can be a fast-day. In The Jewish New Year
 CHAPTER SEVEN 223

Festival (1947) we sought to show (pp. 103-124) that the origins of the
post-exilic seventh-day Sabbath with its strict taboos is to be found in
the taboo days of tenth century Assyria (1,7,9, 14, 19, 21,28,29,30),
all days of strict prohibitions. Asshur-bani-pal (662-626 B.C.) reduced
these to the 7, 14, 21, 28 of each month. Thus having first come into
contact during the ninth/eight centuries with new-moon days (1, 29,
30) and seven-days (7, 14, 21, 28, 19-49 from the previous new-
month-day-9 which was Gula's day) with all their taboos, they came
into renewed contact with Mesopotamia in the sixth century when
the only taboo days were the seven-days. It was thus that the word
shabbath, which originally marked the end of a period, 1) came to re-
ceive the meaning 'rest' in the sense of taboo, restraint from doing
things (even healing the sick, as in Mesopotamia) restraint from
moving about (as in Mesopotamia). This change in the Sabbath
belongs to the first days of Babylonian domination, and is thus
c. 590 B.C.
In Isaiah 56: 1 and 2 we are in the days following the time when the
taboo-Sabbath was being established as the sign of the Covenant.
This theme, as we have seen, is common to Isa. 56: 1-2 and Ezek. 20.
The other crime in Ezek. 20 is following after and looking to idols
(verse 16, 18,24). This is the monotheistic theme of the Second Isaiah.
He was, as we have seen, primarily concerned with the coming Return
of the People of God to Jerusalem. He was not concerned particularly,
even in a contributory sense, with such things as keeping the Sabbath,
or with maintaining the distinctions between clean and unclean,
except in a general way, 52: 11. Ezekiel 22: 8, 26 regards these things
as being of great importance, and thus represents a way of thinking
different from that of the Second Isaiah. Both inveigh against idols,
but Ezekiel is more concerned than is the Second Isaiah with those
distinctions and emphases which later became the essence of Judaism.
In Isa. 56: 1 and 2 we get a combination of the two emphases, the
legalistic emphasis which is beginning to find prominence in Ezekiel
and the emphasis on salvation which is so strong in the Second Isaiah.
]n 56: 2 we have 'man' tzj'l~ and 'son of man' O'~-l:l used in parellel.
SKINNER sees 2) here reference to mankind in general, mostly because
the root of the first word basically means 'be weak' (and so the frailty
of human kind) or it may be akin to the Akkadian tenifetu (humanity,

1) The root originally meant 'come to an end, come to a rest'; the Sabbath
originally marked the end of the month: see op. cit., p. 112.
2) op. cit., p. 164.
224 N. H. SNAITH

human race), and also because the second word strictly means 'human
being,' cf. the Latin homo and the Greek &vep(J.l7tO~. But the two
words can also mean 'any man' (i.e. any individual). Whether this
means any man out of all mankind or any man of the Jews depends
upon the context, and the criteria by which the exegete is judging.
For example, 'neighbour' can mean 'neighbour Jew' (as in Lev. 19)
or it can mean 'neighbour human being' (Samaritan to Jew, Lk.
10: 25-37). In 56: 2, we think it means any Israelite.
Isaiah 56: 3-8. Here we get a point of view far more liberal than
the returning exiles favoured. These returning exiles claimed that
they and they alone were the People of God and they would cut out
entirely the foreigner. This is verse 3, where the 'stranger' of EVV is
wrong, and the 'foreigner' of RSV is right. The Hebrew of 'surely
separate' (RV, RSV) is I;l',~, I;l,~;,. This root belongs mostly to P
and the Chronicler. It is the root of the word Habdalah ;,I;l,~;" the
technical word for that principle of utter separation (cf. A V) which is
the core of Judaism and has made the Jew separate and apart through-
out all the centuries. It was the work of Nehemiah and Ezra finally
and securely to establish this principle of Habdalah 1) and so create
Judaism. Indeed, the third 2) and last history in the Old Testament,
that contained in Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah, is really the story of
the rise and triumph of the Jewish principle of Habdalah. The first
chapter of Genesis (the Priestly tradition) is an account of Creation by
Habdalah. The theory of Judaism is part of the fabric of the world.
God created it that way in the beginning. Any degree of similarity in
development which the first chapter of Genesis may have to any
other theory of creation is wholly accidental. Here God creates by
making distinctions, by dividing, and the word for 'divide' is always
I;l',~;" strictly 'to cause a separation.' See verses 4, 6, 7, 14, 18:
always God divided this from that. He made the light to be separated
from the darkness; the waters above the firmament to be separated
from the waters below the firmament, and so on. And the Flood was
when this separation broke down (Gen. 7: 11 ,P). God made every
herb with its own separate seed, and every fruit tree separate and
distinct from every other. Every creature on land and in the sea and the
air was made strictly according to its own species. Everything was
1) The modern equivalent of a pure race policy, often with religious support,
is apartheid.
2) The first is Deuteronomy-2 Kings. The second is Genesis-Numbers, the
P-history, which embodies traditions known as J and E.
 CHAPTER SEVEN 225

created according to the principle of Habdalah; all things were made

separated. At the other end of the Old Testament (Hebrew) is Chron-
icles-Ezra-Nehemiah, which originally concluded with the last verse
of Nehemiah: 'Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign ':ll ...
Remember me, 0 my God, for good.' This exclusiveness is what
CHEYNE called 'the severe spirit of the restored exiles (cf. Neh. 13)
which doubtless began to show itself during the Captivity.' 1) It did
indeed show itself during the captivity. It is the nationalism of the
Second Isaiah bearing a fruit which let us hope he did not forsee.
But it was not only he; the separation is found also in Ezek. 22: 26
(clean and unclean) and in Ezek. 42: 20 (holy and common). Evidently
it was the temper of the exiles as a whole.
But this writer (Isaiah 56: 3-8) does not exclude every foreigner
":ll ('stranger' is wrong). He maintains that every man who keeps
the Sabbath, who chooses what is well-pleasing to God and in this
way holds fast to the covenant, is welcome in God's house of prayer
and is not to be separated from the People of God. The word is n':l,
cut off, excommunicated (see the P-tradition), thrown out. But the
writer says that even if the man is a foreigner (v. 3) or a eunuch (v. 4),
he is nevertheless welcome. Race does not count (which probably
here means Babylonian or Palestinian Jew); circumcision does not
count. Nothing counts except that a man shall sincerely desire to join
himself to the LORD, to minister to Him and to love His Name. God
will not separate off (the root is "i:li1) the foreigner, nor will be ex-
communicate n':l the eunuch.
The LORD will give the eunuch a memorial i' and a name better
than sons and daughters. It shall be an everlasting name and shall
never be cut off. All this has to do with posterity. It is uncertain what
exactly is the nature of this memorial (lit. 'hand'), but Absalom (2
Sam. 18: 18) is said to have set up a stone pillar in the King's Vale
because he had no son to keep his name in remembrance. Presumably
the three sons of 2 Sam. 14: 27 died in infancy. But this pillar was cal-
led 'Absalom's hand' and was apparently still there when 2 Samuel was
written down. The word i' (hand), then, has to do with maintaining
a man's memory when he has no issue. This certainly is what is intend-
ed in Is. 56: 5, and indeed more than this: the name will be continued
for ever on the roll of the People of God. He will be more firmly one

1) The Prophecies of Isaiah, II, p. 64.

226 N. H. SNAITH

of God's people than those whose physical descendants are numbered

amongst them.
God will bring the foreigner (v. 6 f.) to His holy mountain, pre-
sumably Mount Zion, and will give him great joy in the House of
Prayer that is there. The foreigner's whole-offerings and his shared-
offerings!) n:lTwill be acceptable, for 'mine house shall be called a house
of prayer for all peoples (v. 7).' We understand v. 8 to mean that in
addition to God's gathered ones (the returning exiles who claim that
they alone are of true descent and truly the People of God), the LORD
will gather others to Himself, these foreigners and eunuchs. Weare
here in the world of 1 Kg. 8: 41-43, a very different world from the
Judaism which was established by Nehemiah and Ezra. The writer of
56: 3-8 is thoroughly out of sympathy with the nationalism of the
Second Isaiah and its bitter fruit. He is in sympathy with Ezekiel's
insistence on keeping the Sabbath, but out of sympathy with his
nationalism. This man welcomes all who will keep the Sabbath and
seek to do what is well-pleasing to God. He does not work by genealo-
gies, as did the Chronicler; he does not even insist upon circumcision.
The LORD will gather others besides the dispersed of Israel (cf.
Jer. 40: 12; 43: 5), those who were carried off to Babylonia. The writer
is probably one of those who never left Palestine, many of whom were
as sincere and devout in their worship of God as any Babylonian
Jew (Ezra 4: 2). Even if it cannot be proved that the writer was a
Palestinian Jew, he certainly was in full sympathy with those Pales-
tinians who are called 'the people of the land' 2) in Ezra 10: 11.
The most likely date, therefore, for this section is the early days fol-
lowing the Return, but after the completion of the rebuilding of the
Temple in 516 B.C.-say, 510-500 B.C.
The other side of the picture is to be seen in Ezek. 44: 6-9, where a
charge is made against 'the rebellious ones,3) the house of Israel'
'that they have brought in foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and
flesh to be in my sanctuary to profane my house.' The charge is
') See 'Sacrifices in the Old Testament,' VT vii 3 (Oct. 1957), pp. 308-317;
also R. DE VAUX, Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice (1964), p. 42. But see R. SCHMID,
Das Bundesopfer in Israel (1964), who maintains that they were covenant-offerings.
2) This phrase later came to mean 'the common herd,' those who did not keep
the full measure of the Law.
3) Lit. 'rebellion' ~.,~. LXX and the Targum assume an original ~.,~ l'1~::1
(house of rebellion), and so also in 2: 7, where some Hebrew MSS and printed
books also have ~,~ l'1~::I. Most exegetes of modern times alter the text and read
'house of rebellion,' but we are of the opinion that this is wrong and confuses
the whole passage.
 CHApTER SEVEN 227

against 'the house of Israel' whom we understand to be the People of

God, the returned exiles, and they are called 'rebellion' because they
are disobeying what the writer believes to be the clear will of God.
He does not call them 'house of rebellion,' because that means those
who did not go into exile in 597 B.C, (Ezek. 2: 3, etc.), and he is not
speaking to them. These are 'the people of the land' of Ezra 10: 11
and they were in favour of what Isaiah 56: 3-8 advocates and Ezek.
44: 6-9 condemns. The charge is that the house of Israel have allowed
these foreigners to offer God's food on the altar, that is the fat and the
blood of slaughtered animals, these being the parts of the animal
which went to the altar, whatever the type of sacrifice, though prob-
ably the reference is to the shared-offering n:u. Thus the house of
Israel has broken the covenant (this is why they are called ,.,~). All
this is so exactly what is advocated in Isa. 56: 3-8 that if the writer of
Ezek. 44 had seen Isa. 56: 3-8 he could scarcely have been more
precise in his charges.
Thus Isa. 56: 3-8 is universal in the usually accepted meaning
of the word in connexion with the Second Isaiah, but Ezek. 40-48
is nationalistic, as we believe the Second Isaiah to be. What, then,
is to be said of the author of Ezek. 40-48? Most scholars are inclined
to hold that these nine chapters are either wholly or in part from the
hand of Ezekiel himself, the author of (possibly, substantially)
chapters 1-39. Whether this is so or not, the author of 40-48 was
certainly pro-Zadokite, and it is more than likely that he was a Za-
dokite and therefore one of, or descended from the pre-exilic Jerusalem
priesthood, those who were carried off to Babylonia at the destruction
of the Temple in 586 B.C Whether the author of chapters 1-39 was a
priest is not so clear from the contents of these chapters, since Ezek.
1: 1-3 may be wholly editorial, as certainly some of it is. It may well be
that Ezekiel is called a priest 1) because of the contents of chapters
40-48. We agree with BERTHOLET (Hezekiel, 1963) that the writer of
1-39 (at least) went to Babylonia in 586 B.C and not 597 B.C, and
the same is true of the author of 40-48, who mayor may not be the
same Ezekiel, or of his father.
We take Isa. 56: 3-8 and Ezek. 44: 4-8 to belong to roughly the
period of the struggle for power which took place immediately upon
the Return. The strict party was composed of the returning exiles,
headed by the Zadokite priesthood, who had to fight for their position
1) It makes no difference whether 'the priest' in 1: 3 refers to Ezekiel or his
father, since the priesthood was a matter of descent in any case.
228 N. H. SNAITH

as priests: see Zech. 3: 7 where Joshua is stripped of his filthy gar-

ments (he had been in an unclean land) and given 'right of access'
(C':li;Ji1/;), RSV) to the altar. He was restored to the High Priesthood
which his father Jehozadak had held (1 Chr. 6: 15; heb. 5: 41).
Isaiah 56: 3-8 represents the other point of view, that of the Palestin-
ians. Our guess is that this group may have been the Aaronites, who
were not priests at Jerusalem before the exile, moved in probably
during the exile from (?) Bethel,1) and formed the minority of the
priests when the final settlement was made. 2)
Isaiah 56: 9-12. There is general agreement that this section has
nothing to do with the previous section. It has been held to be an
excerpt from a pre-exilic prophecy. Some have equated the wild
beasts with the heathen peoples generally, others with the Samaritans.
It is impossible to fix the date. It may belong to any century from the
eighth to the fifth, and may even be earlier or later. Blind leaders,
leaders that pursue policies that lead to disaster and leaders that cannot
give warning of trouble and disaster, greedy dogs that never have
enough-no age and no people have a monopoly of these. The situat-
ion is similar to that of the prophet Malachi. The section is not con-
cerned with the question as to who is and who is not the People of
God.
Isaiah 57: 1-2. It is not possible to assign any date to these verses.
They form two distinct couplets, and the verse division is not in
accordance with the poetic sructure. We judge them to be two in-
dependent couplets placed together because of the common words
!:JON (gather) and j:"':S (righteous). The first couplet is

The-righteous-man j:"':S perishes,

and-no-man is-taking-it to-heart;
And-men-loyal (to the covenant) are-taken-off !:JON,
with-no-one taking-notice.
and the second couplet is:
For-from-the-presence-of evil

1) KENNETT, 'The Origin of the Aaronite Priesthood,' ]TS vi (1905), pp. 161-
186.
2) The priests of the P-tradition were 'the priests, the sons of Aaron,' but two
thirds of them were Zadokite, reckoned as the elder branch and descended through
Eleazar and Phinehas, and one third were Aaronite, reckoned as the younger
branch and descended through Ithamar, 1 Chr. 24 3 f.
 CHAPTER SEVEN 229

the-righteous-man P":!l: is-taken-oif r'jON.

(he enters peace/prosperity)
They-rest on-their-beds,
(everyone) who-walks straight-forwardly.
The first couplet bemoans the fate of the loyal, righteous man who
keeps the covenant. The second couplet says either that the righteous
man is saved from evil by the peace of the grave (cf. Job 3: 13 if.),
or that he is snatched away from misfortune and prospers. Once more,
the section is not concerned with the struggle of the early post exilic
days between the two factions.
Isaiah 57: 3-14. If, as seems most probable, this is all one piece, then
it is a tirade against people in Palestine who are charged with syn-
cretistic worship. It has been pointed out 1) that the scenery is Palestin-
ian with its terebinths (RV, RSVoaks), its conifers (RV, RSV 'green-
trees,' lit. luxuriant, fresh, which means evergreen, non-deciduous),
the wadies (RV, RSV valleys) and the clefts of the crags. These
Palestinians have charged the speaker and his friends with being
'children of rebellion' (:;)tz.itl ',':0': not ,.,~) and of false descent "ptz.i :;).,T,
insults which the speaker is hurling back at them. The prophet is
speaking on behalf of God's people (v. 14) who are returning from
Babylonia-compare v. 14 with 40: 4; 'build up' is the same root as
'highway,' and 'prepare the way' is ,." 'ltl, which is translated
'prepare the way' in 40: 4. The prophet says that he will tell of (broad-
cast) their 'righteousness and doings,' but they will be of no avail.
SKINNER says that the reference to righteousness 'must be spoken
ironically,' 2) and he rightly refers to the Samaritans (Ezra 4: 2).
The charge is that they have a mixed worship. They may indeed claim
to be true worshippers of YHVH, but this is combined with all kinds
of heathen practices and religious rites.
In order to understand the situation in these troublous times of the
latter quarter of the sixth century (say, 538-500 B.C., and the following
years also), we must turn to 2 Kgs. 17: 23b-41. 3) This section is the
official basis of the later claim that the Samaritans were not true Jews,
that these northerners were not the People of God. The chapter comes
from the Deuteronomic editors of the Books of Kings, and is most

1) e.g. SKINNER, op. cit., p. 171.

2) op. cit., p. 176.
3) Cf. H. H. ROWLEY, 'The Samaritan Schism in Legend and History' in
Israel's Prophetic Heritage (1962), pp. 208-222.
230 N. H. SNAITH

probably an addition by the second and final editors ca. 550 B.C.,
those who found new courage and hope when they saw the easing in
the rigours of imprisonment which came to the deposed Jehoiachin
at the accession of Evil-Merodach in 561 B.C. (2 Kgs. 25: 27-30). 'the
basis of the argument in 2 Kgs. 17 is the statement that the whole of
Israel, the northern kingdom, was deported by the Assyrian king, and
that he settled in their place a miscellaneous population from Babylon,
Cuthah, Ava and so forth. 'these settlers set up their own gods, but
neglected 'the god of the land,' that is, the God of Israel. 'this entailed
ravages by lions, which doubtless had multiplied in numbers and in
boldness because of the depopulation caused by war and by the
deportation. An exiled priest was therefore sent back and he settled
in Bethel, with the result that a mixed cult was developed there.
''they feared the LORD, and served (worshipped) their own gods' (v.
33), and they made priests for themselves from non-priestly families.
'this last, in the mind of a southerner, meant from non-Levites. The
reason for the long condemnation is to be found in the last verse
(41): 'So these nations feared the LORD and served their graven
images; their children likewise, and their children's children, as did
their fathers, so do they unto this day.' 'this is a charge against the
sixth century ancestors of the Samaritans. DUHM thought of it all
as a polemic against the Samaritans, and SKINNER suggested that the
prophet was thinking of a paganised Judaean population closely akin
to the Samaritans of the North and cultivating friendly relations
with them. These suggestions involve dating the section in 2 Kgs
and the section in Isa. 57 much later than is necessary. Both passages
are against the Palestinian Judaeans who never left the country.
'they are charges by returning exiles against 'the people of the land.'
'the sections belong to the same religious point of view as that in-
dicated by Ezekiel's 'rebellious house,' Jeremiah's 'bad figs' and the
Second Isaiah. In these three writers the breach was not as wide as in
2 Kgs. 17 and Isa. 57: 3-14, and the controversy had not grown bitter.
Time is not always a healer; somtimes he makes wounds fester.
'thus Isaiah 57: 3-14 belongs to the early days of 'the cold war'
between the returning exiles who claimed to be the People of God,
and those Israelites who had never been in Babylonia, who claimed
that they also sought the same God (Ezra 4: 2). 'the charges are of
licentious rites beneath the ever-green trees, child sacrifice in the
valleys, sacred prostitution on the hills, household gods behind the
door, spices for the cult of Molech. 'these are all the malpractices
 CHAPTER SEVEN 231

which Deuteronomy condemns. They are not so much what the

Israelites found in Canaan at their first entry into the land, as what they
found when they entered the second time to occupy 1) it. Indeed, it is
as though the second Moses of Deut. 18: 15 is the Moses who is
speaking in Deuteronomy, and speaking to the new Israel about to
enter Canaan, just as the old Israel entered Canaan centuries before.
There is no need to assume with SKINNER that the highway of 57: 14
is 'an emblem of the preparation for that larger deliverance to which
the hopes of the post-exilic community were eagerly directed.' 2) The
passage is not 5th century. It is late sixth century, the beginning of the
cold war.
Isaiah 57: 15-20. Ultimately the dating and placing of this section
depends upon the initial assumptions. This is true of many passages
in the Old Testament, but perhaps more in this case than in most.
Verse 15 in LXX differs considerably from the Hebrew text, though
the general background is the same. This particular verse is firmly
in the tradition of the Second Isaiah, especially if 61: 1 f. is included as
being his: the highly exalted One who dwells on high and at the same
time is with the crushed and humble of spirit. There is no contrast
implied (SKINNER, in loc., is right here), since transcendence and
imminence are compatible. It is transcendence and immanence that
are incompatible. 3)
'The humble and contrite (lit. 'crushed') ones who are to be made to
live again (hiph<il of :-I'n, revive) are the exiles. God strove against
them (better 'took up a case as in the courts' ~,.,) and was angry
with them, but this was not for ever, since in that case 'their spirit
(mem lost through haplography) would fail from my presence, and
the breathing-beings (lit. 'breaths') which I have made.' This refers
to the punishment of the exile, as also does v. 17: 'I was angry at his
iniquity for a moment (cf. LXX) and I smote him, hiding my face in
anger. He went stubbornly in the path of his own choice. Then I gave
consideration to his ways (v. 18), and I healed him (read strong-waw)
and led him, and recompensed him with full relief (c'~nl: see note on
40: 1), creating for his mourners the fruit of lips: 4) peace, peace,
1) This root W.,' (57: 13) is usually translated 'possess, dispossess.' It means
take possession of the land by occupying it having driven out the previous oc-
cupants, and it is used regularly in the story of the conquest of Canaan.
2) op. cit., p. 177. Presumably he means the coming of the Messiah.
3) 'God, Transcendent and Imminent,' ET lxviii 3 (Dec. 1956), pp. 68-71.
4) A most difficult phrase. It is not in LXX. Perhaps it refers to the effective
words of comfort which God speaks through the prophet-peace, peace.
232 N. H. SNAITH

saith the LORD, to both far and near.' Verse 19 is thought by SKINNER
to refer to Jews still in exile and Jews who have already returned. Thus
it is better to retain 'and led him' ,:-rMlK' in v. 18 and not follow
LXX with ':-r~MlK' (and comforted him). Many scholars understand
the verse to refer to the Dispersion. Our judgment is that SKINNER
is right, and we assume a date between 538 and 520 B.C. for the
section.

Isaiah 58: 1-14. This chapter belongs to a period when the restoration
of ruined buildings, homes and foundations and walls, was an im-
mediate necessity (v. 12). The ancient ruins apparently had not been
restored, and neither walls nor roads remade. The chapter is addressed
to 'my people', 'the house of Jacob' (v. 1). The matter is of some
urgency since the prophet is bidden 'cry aloud with the throat' and
'lift his voice high like the sound of an alarm' (v. 1). The people are
regular in their worship and sincere. They delight to know God's
ways; they do what is right and they do not desert the proper way of
doing things (t:)!:ltV~, proper custom in life and cultus). But things are
going wrong, in spite of the fact that they are rigorously abstinent
(lit. 'affiict their souls,' the regular phrase in the P-tradition for 'fast,'
Lev. 16: 29, etc.). The prophet says that their fasts are not true fasts.
They fast for their own purposes CY!:ln: cf. 53: 10) and they 'oppress
(tVll, the root used for the 'taskmasters' in Exolus 3 and 8) their
pains.' This phrase means that they deliberately intensify their fasts.
They are using them as a weapon in their quarrels: 'behold, you fast
to quarrel and to fight, and to smite with the fist of wickedness (v. 4).'
There are further charges: oppression, refusing to feed the poor
and care for the homeless, hiding themselves from their own flesh.
The people against whom the prophet is speaking are being very
religious and ultra-strict in their religious observances, and all the
stricter because they are using these religious exercises to set up strife
and to widen the separation between themselves and others. These
others are men of their own flesh-at least, the writer maintains that
they are such. What these very religious offenders must do is to put
away these restrictive practices, stop pointing a scornful finger and
stop speaking calumny. They must obey the Deuteronomic injunctions
(Deut. 22: 1-4) concerning their treatment of their own people. They
must observe the Sabbath in true fashion, make it a day of delight and
honour, and not observe it for their own purposes. These charges all
give support for a date not far removed from Zech. 7: 1-7, namely c.
 CHAPTER SEVEN 233

516 B.C. 'the writer is pro-Palestinian. He has close affinities with the
Second Isaiah (vv. 8 and 9, 10, 12), but he believes that the way in
which the glorious visions of future prosperity are to be realised is by
including and not excluding the Palestinian Jews.
Isaiah 59: 1-4. 'the question is asked: Why is it that things are going so
badly? The answer is that it is not the LORD's fault. His hand is not
shortened (cf. 50: 2), and He is still strong to save. It is your iniquities
that are causing a separation C'~":J~ between you and your God.
It is not He that has hidden His face from you; it is your own sins.
'there is no straight-forward dealing in the courts; all is trickery
and sharp practice. 'the passage might belong to any period when
things were going badly politically and economically, except for the
use of the separation-root ~':J, which inclines the balance in favour of
the period of the early development of Judaism, c. 500 B.C.
Isaiah 59: 5-8. 'these verses describe the misdemeanours and mal-
practices of the time in more poetical language than is employed
in the previous verses. They may well belong to some collection of
psalms or proverbs. Compare v. 7a with Provo 1: 16 and Ps. 14: 3
(LXX). 'the section might belong to almost any period.
Isaiah 59: 9-15a. Here the people themselves, or the prophet on their
behalf, take up the tale of woe. Verses 12 and 13 read like a General
Confession and may be liturgical in origin. The speakers are concerned
that salvation from their present and continuing woes is as far away
as ever. This is in v. 9, where ~~w~ (judgement, here a divine verdict
which will bring them good fortune) and ilP'::; ('righteousness,' but
rather 'being put in the right') both mean 'salvation': see the second
half of the verse. Also in v. 11 ~~w~ (judgment) is equivalent to
ill7Wr (salvation) and in v. 14 to ilP'::; (righteousness: once more in the
sense of being put in the right). 'the passage may belong to any
period, though there is influence from the Second Isaiah.
Isaiah 59: 15b-21. This section is definitely in the style of the Second
Isaiah, indeed there is a great deal to be said for including it with
chapters 60-62 as actually from his hand, and placed where it is be-
cause of the verbal links of verses 14-15a and 15b. 'there was no justice
and no one among mankind to intervene. 1) He therefore Himself took
action to bring salvation and vindication to the sufferers. 'thus God
1) As we pointed out in commenting on Isa. 53: 12, the regular translation
of the verb l7l~ in the sense of interceding has been most unfortunate.
234 N. H. SNAITH

armed Himself for the fight like a warrior; armed Himself with ilpi:!t
(actively putting things right), with salvation, with vengeance Cpl
and with zeal ilNlp. All this is directed agaunst his enemies, his ad-
versaries, who are the isles C"N, a word used regularly by the Second
Isaiah to mean the Gentiles. In the end all the world (19) will fear the
LORD, from east to west, so fierce will be the torrent of His onset.
Thus (20) the redeemed will come to Zion and the covenant will be
established for ever and ever.
Chapters 60-62 have been dealt with (pp. 198-200) as being definitely
the word of the Second Isaiah himself.

Isaiah 63: 1-6. This section speaks of a ruthless and bloody vengeance
on Edom. LAGARDE, DUHM and MARTI have suggested such emenda-
tions (slight as they are) as would remove Edom from the context,
and substitute 'Syria' (C'N for CiN), but the puns on Edom and its
literal meaning 'red', and on Bozrah and its literal meaning 'first-ripe
grape' make the passage too aptly macabre to warrant any such
changes. If it is allowed that there is a strong nationalistic element in
the Second Isaiah, then this section is not as alien to him and to his
sphere of influence as some suppose. The Second Isaiah is no generous-
hearted lover of all the world with kind thoughts about the Gentiles,
who have ruthlessly smashed his people and all they held dear and
still deny them nationhood and liberty and a future of their own.
The word Cpl (vengeance) is found in 47: 3 and in 61: 2, a context
which all are happy to associate closely with the Second Isaiah even
if some hesitate actually to ascribe it to him. No one objects to the end
of verse 1 as being in tune with the Second Isaiah ('I that speak in
righteousness, mighty to save') and in vv. 3 and 5 we have the familiar
(50: 2; 59: 16) statement that He looked and there was none to help.
He had to act alone. The section begins with vengeance on Edom,
who rushed in to take full advantage of the downfall of Judah. It
ends with vengeance and fury on the Gentiles. All this fits in with the
rampant nationalism of the end of the sixth century B.C. The Century
Bible commentary says that 'the conception of redemption has harden-
ed in the interval since the days of Deutero-Isaiah.' The writer of that
commentary has minimised 49: 26; 41: 26; 42: 13: 43: 3; 49: 23.
There is nothing in the section which absolutely demands a Palestinian
locale, just as equally there is nothing which demands a Babylonian
locale, but we are certainly in the world of a resurgent Jewish nation-
alism.
 CHAPTER SEVEN 235

Isaiah 63: 7-64: 12. We come now to what, from our point of view,
is the most important section of these eleven chapters. This piece
is from a member of a group who claim (64: 7, Eng. 8) that the
LORD is their father, no matter what anybody may say. They are the
clay; He is the potter and 'we are all the work of thy hand.' The claim
is emphatically made and the way in which it is phrased suggests
irresistibly that they are rebutting a charge, a denial that the LORD
is their father, and that they are His handy-work. See also 63: 16:
For thou art our Father,
Though Abraham does not know us,
And Israel does not recognise us.
Thou, 0 LORD, art our Father:
Our Redeemer from of old is thy Name.'
Here is a group of people whom Abraham-Israel rejects and denies
that they are the LORD's. They answer that they are indeed His, as
much His as anybody else is: He has been their Redeemer from
ancient time, which from the context must mean the rescue from
Egypt, the passage through the Red Sea, and the journey through the
Wilderness with the Entry into Canaan. L. E. BROWNE 1) rightly saw
here pro-Samaritan and indeed pre-Samaritan literature. The piece
begins (63: 7):
I -will-call-to-mind the-LORD's deeds-of-steadfast-love,
The-LORD's deeds-that-call-for-praise,
According-to-all the-LORD hath-done-for-us,
An d -the-abundan t -good-fortune to-the-h ouse-of-Israel,
Which He-dealt-us (LXX and Lat.) according-to-his-compassion,
Accordir g-to-the multitude-of His-deeds-of-steadfast-love.
The next verse is:
And-he-said: Nay-my-people are they,
Children that-will-not-deal-falsely.
And-he-was to-them a-saviour
In-all their-distresses.
Here we have a spokesman who is looking back and calling to
mind the great deeds of salvation in the past, wrought by the LORD
on behalf of His covenant-people. He is speaking on behalf of a
group who are being denied a place among the People of God. We are
-------
1) Early Judaism (1920), pp. 70 if.
236 N. H. SNAITH

justified in introducing the word 'covenant' here, because the word

,on has by this time, and especially in such a context as this come
to refer to God's steadfast, sure love for Israel and His faithfulness to
the covenant between Him and them. Further as L. E. BROWNE has
made clear,!) the use of the root ,pw (deal falsely) involves the idea
of the covenant, cf. Ps. 44: 18 (Eng. 17); 89: 34. The speaker uses the
word 1~ (63: 8), which is usually, but erroneously, translated 'surely.'
This particle involves assertion in the face of denial,2) and whilst it is
possible so to pronounce the word 'surely' in order to ensure this
meaning, it is better to translate it' Nay, but.' The speaker means that
in spite of all his opponents can say, he still maintains that he and his
companions are God's people. We are God's people, he says, and we
will not deal falsely in the covenant. That is why and how we can
say that God has been our Saviour in all our distresses from time
immemorial.
He says further (63: 9) that it was not a messenger nor an angel
(1~'?~' ,.,~ LXX, Latin) who saved them, but 'God's Presence and
His very Self.' Compare Exod. 33: 13], where the LORD says: 'My
Presence shall go with thee ,~'?., "lC and I will give thee rest,' cf. Isa.
63: 14. The piece continues:
In-his-Iove and-in-his-forbearance
He redeemed-them,
And-he-lifted-them and-carried-them
All-the-days-of old.
But-they-rebelled and-vexed
His-holy spirit,
So-he-changed-himself to-them to-be-an-enemy,
He-himself fought-against-them.

Here we have the story of God's continued mercy, and the cause of the
Disaster of 597 and 586 B.C. The people of God rebelled against
Him and He brought disaster upon them. But there has come a change;
they remembered the days of old (63: 11) and they pray concernin g
the present situation (63: 15):
Then-he (Israel)-remembered the-days-of old
Moses his-servant: 3)

1) op. cit., p. 80.

2) 'The meaning of the Hebrew 1~: VT xiv 2 (April 1964), pp. 221-225.
3) These two words are not in LXX; some Heb. MSS and Syriac have 'Moses
 CHAPTER SEVEN 237

Where-is he-that-brought-them-up from the-sea?

Where-is (Targum) the-Shepherd-of 1) his-flock?
Where-is he-that-set in-the-midst-of-him
His-holy spirit?
Who-caused-to-go at-the-right-hand-of Moses
His-glorious arm?
Who-clave the-waters before-them
To-make-for-himself a-name (? for ever) 2)?
Who-brought-them through-the-Deeps,
Like-a-horse in the wilderness 3)
They did-not-stumble.
Like-cattle that-go-down into-the-valley,
The-spirit-of-the-LORD gave-him-rest. 4)
So thou-didst-Iead thy-people 5)
To-make-thyself a-glorious-name.

Here we have a recounting of the details of the ancient saga, par-

ticularly of the Joseph tribes who came into Canaan under Joshua
across the Jordan near by Gilgal. These mighty deeds of old, these
mighty deeds of salvation, are claimed by the writer and his friends
as having been wrought for them and their forbears, the People of
God, and they insist on this in spite of denials by others. They admit
their rebellion against God (10) and acknowledge the justice of the
subsequent punishment, but they remember also those other days 6)
when God extended His covenant-mercy to their fathers. And so in
verse 15 there comes a prayer concerning the present situation:

Look-out from-the-heavens and-see

from-thy-high-abode, holy and-glorious.

his servant' ("':~ for '~~). A two-accent line is necessary here because of the
metre, and the Syriac reading makes good sense.
1) Heb. has the plural, but it is sing. in many Heb. MSS, LXX, Latin, Targum.
2) Some omit for the sake of the metre.
3) Having come in triumph through the depths of the Sea, they rampaged
through the Wilderness like a war-horse in battle, never stumbling, and came
gladly into the Promised land like cattle down into the valley.
4) The Versions have '~ijm (thou didnt lead them), but the Hebrew is better,
certainly if the meaning is the rest of the Promised Land.
6) After all, the experiences of the Exodus and the Wilderness belonged to the
Joseph tribes rather than to Judah, which was mostly the creation of David, and
only a comparatively small element knew of the Exodus. The South 'stole' the
North's God! This makes the plea of the North more poignant than ever.
6) Compare the southern Ps. 78, especially vv. 67 f.
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV 16
238 N. H. SNAITH

Where-is thy-zeal and-thy-might

The-yearning-of thy-bowels?
And-do-not-restrain 1) thy-great-compassion.
For-thou-art our-Father
Though Abraham does-not-know us
And-Israel does-not-recognise-us;
Thou, O-LORD, art-our-Father,
Our-Redeemer from-of-old is-thy-name.
This is a plea for compassion as in the ancient days. The author
and his friends claim that they are the true descendants of those
whom God called out of Egypt and brought into Canaan through
water and desert. Jeremiah condemned them; Ezekiel rejected them;
the Second Isaiah spoke against them in Isa. 48; Zerubbabel is said to
have rejected them (Ezra 4: 2). The returned exiles stated the claim
of their adversaries as a statement that they had worshipped the
LORD ever since Esar-haddon's time, they having all been brought
there by the Assyrian king (2 Kgs. 17: 24-34), but that was Southern
propaganda. Their claim was that they had been there from the be-
ginning of the Israelite occupation.
Verse 17 begins: 'Why dost thou make us to go astray 0 LORD
from thy ways, and hardenest our heart from fearing thee?' These
phrases do not mean that God has made them err or has hardened their
hearts, but that they have erred and their hearts were hardened-
they were stubborn in their wickedness: cf. Isa. 6: 9-12. The Hebrews
were sure concerning two things about God: one that He is the One
only God, and the other that He is essentially active in this world
which He has made. Their zeal for the first led them not to distinguish
between post hoc and propter hoc; their zeal for the second led them to
think of Him as the personal link between every cause and every
effect, both small and great. The verse continues, 'Turn, for the sake
of thy servants, the tribes of thy possession.' This is a plea for a return
to the original relationship, that covenant which God made with all
the tribes of Israel in the day when He brought them out of Egypt.
The verse says 'tribes' and it means 'tribes.'
Verse 18 is 'For a little while thy holy people had possession, our
adversaries have trampled thy sanctuary.' LXX and Latin have:
'for a little while we possessed thy holy mountain' (Cod. A adds
'our enemies trampled thy sanctuary'). The root O,:J means 'trample,

1) So LXX and 64: 11, j:'tlN1'l1'l ~N.

 CHAl>TER SEVEN 239

tread down' and is used always of destruction or desecration, so the

first thought is that the 'adversaries' are the Babylonians and that the
temple is still in ruins: which places the section in the period between
538-520 B.C., though L. E. BROWNE 1) thought of it as having been
written before 538 B.C. but in Palestine by those whom we have called
the Palestinian Jews. On the other had, whilst the root O,:J is indeed
elsewhere used of destruction and desecration, it does not follow
that the reference here is to the destructive trampling of the Babylon-
ians in 586 B.C. Compare the root O~', which also is used of de-
structive trampling down, but in Isa. 1 :12 is used of what Isaiah
of Jerusalem held to be the irreligious, though fulsome worship of
his contemporaries. Thus here in 63: 18 the writer may be referring
to the fact that people are worshipping there, of whose attitude he
does not approve, and whose religion he does not think is sound and
right. Also, who are 'our adversaries'? It may well be that the Baby-
lonians are intended. On the other hand, 'adversaries' is a word used
in the strife between the two parties in the fifth century, Neh. 4: 5
(Eng. 11); Ezra 4: 1 especially. In this case, the reference may be to
the returned exiles who have taken possession of the Temple mount
and are driving out and denying access to those who had not been in
exile. It is curious also that the true LXX text refers to 'holy mount'
and not to 'sanctuary.' But in any case, whether the verse refers to the
Babylonians having destroyed the temple or to the returning exiles
having taken exclusive possession of the site, the section comes from
the Palestinian Jews and belongs to the period before 520 B.C.
Verse 19 provides us with what the returning exiles said about the
Palestinians. See L. E. BROWNE, op. cit. p. 83. He proposes that we
read 'We are become "From of old thou didst not rule over them"
and "Thy name was not called over them".' He takes the two sentences
within the inner quotation marks to be statements made by the re-
turning exiles about the Palestinians. See also J. ADAMS,2) who shows
that the accents do actually demand this interpretation. When this
verse is considered in association with 64: 7 (Eng. 8) and 64: 8
(Eng. 9), we find this section to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Babylon-
ian, belonging to the years 538-520 B.C.
Isaiah 65: 1-7. In verse 1 R V 'I am enquired' (margin, 'I was en-
quired of') can scarcely be right, because of the final rejection of

1) op. cit., p. 78.

2) Sermons in Accents (1906), pp. 86-88.
240 N. H. SNAITH

v. 7. It is better, therefore, to follow RSV, where the verbs of v. 1a

are treated each as a niph'al tolerativum, and then to translate 'I was
ready to be enquired of by "they have not asked me": 1) I was
ready to be found by "they did not seek me." , This is the same type
of syntax as in 63: 19. The verse continues, as do succeeding verses,
with the statement of what actually happened: 'I said, Here am I,
here am I, to a nation "'l which is not called by my name. 2), God
appealed continually to these apostate ones (the root is .,'0,
turn aside,
not ".,~, rebellion), but they persisted in following their own in-
clinations. They provoked God to His face continually. This root
O"l1::lil (provoke) is used 'about fifty times of Israelites provoking
the LORD to anger by deserting Him and serving foreign gods,' 3)
and once of the Samaritans hindering Nehemiah (Neh. 3: 37: Eng.
4: 5) but never of the heathen. Further the idolatries mentioned in
65: 7 are Palestinian, where we would follow LXX ana Syriac and
read 'their' instead of 'your' (thus following RSV). This is a statement
parallel to 2 Kgs. 17: 41. We hnd the section to be strongly anti-
Palestianian and to belong to the same period as the preceding section.
Isaiah 65: 8-12. Here we have another anti-Palestinian piece. 'There
is new wine to be obtained from the cluster. They say, 'Do not destroy
it, there is a blessing in it.' The writer makes use of a vintage song
(cf. the title ofPss. 57, 58, 59, 75) to proclaim the doctrine of a rem-
nant. The whole of Israel will not be destroyed. The remnant will be
saved and this group will take possession of 'my mountains' (the
Judaean hills). This group is the LORD's chosen, His servants. All
will be well, and there will be prosperity in Sharon and in the Valley
of Achor. There will be flocks and herds there, and all this 'for my
people that have sought me.' The rest will be slaughtered-those who
have forgotten Zion, who have turned aside to the gods of Fortune
(Gad) and of (?) Fate. They did not answer the LORD's call, nor listen
to what He said. They did what was evil, that in which He did not
delight. All these are charges made by the returning exiles against the
Palestinians. DUHM believed that this section was directed against the
Jews of the land as distinct from the returning exiles. We hnd this

1) LXX, Latin, Syriac and 2 Heb. MSS. have the suffix. For this use of the
niph'al, see SKINNER, op. cit. p. 231.
2) The Versions have 'who did not call on my name,' but the vowels of the
Hebrew Text are the more difficult, and the Masoretic interpretation fits the use
of "'l, which means 'a heathen nation.'
3) L. E. BROWNE, op. cit., p. 97.
 CHAPTER SEVEN 241

confirmed by the reference to the Valley of Achor. This was the

valley through which the Israelites under Joshua first entered Canaan,
Josh. 7: 24; 15: 7. It is the valley along which Hosea hoped for a
second and happier entry, Hos. 2: 17 (Eng. 15). It is difficult to be
precise as to the date of this piece, but it belongs to the early days
of the controversy, though perhaps later than some of the pieces,
since the spirit of it is much more fierce.
Isaiah 65: 13-25. This piece begins by contrasting the happy lot of
the LORD's servants with the sorrowful and disastrous fate of their
opponents. These wicked ones will leave a name of evil omen behind
them, but the chosen ones, the LORD's servants, will have another
name. Every man in the land, when he invokes a blessing on himself
will use the name of the God of Amen,l) that is, the God who says
'Amen' to the words His people utter and confirms those words in
action and result. Oaths will be made in His name. The prophet then
speaks in glowing and visionary terms of the amazing prosperity
which will come to God's people in Jerusalem. There shall be no more
weeping and crying. Men will live to a fabulous old age, and every
needs of their's will be met and satisfied before it is even expressed.
The section is pro-Babylonian.
Isaiah 66: 1-2. GRESSMANN placed the first four verses in the period
before Haggai and Zechariah had persuaded the people to build the
second temple, 520-516 B.C. There is every reason to suppose that
he was right so far as the first two verses are concerned. There is no
contrast involved in v.l between heaven and earth, nor is there any
suggestion that it is wrong to build a temple on earth. The Hebrew
is m-"N, i.e. 'where, then' is the house ... : not 'what.' Thus, the
opposite is the case. Rather we have an urgent enquiry for the temple,
as to why it has not been built. God may have His throne in the
heavens, but He needs a resting-place on earth. The Hebrew is 'a
footstool' (lit. a pied-a-terre!). He is looking to the man who is afflicted
and broken of spirit, who trembles at His word. This last makes the
piece pro-Babylonian.
Isaiah 66: 3-4. These verses return to the matter of the mixed worship,
though the meaning is obscured by the insertion in EVV of 'as he
that offereth' and 'as he.' The verses describe a confusion of rites,

1) v. 16. RV and RSV have 'God of truth,' but see RVrn, following DELITZSCH
Rnd CHEYNE: cf. Rev. 3 14.
242 N. H. SNAITH

legitimate and illegitimate, pro-YHVH and anti-YHVH: slaughtering

an ox, slaying a man, sacrificing a lamb, breaking a dog's neck,
offering a gift-offering i1m~, offering swine's blood, making a memor-
ial-offering with incense, blessing an idol. Verse 3 continues: 'Yes;
thry (emphatic) have chosen their ways and thry (again emphatic,
eWEll, lit. 'their soul,' a fulls orne way of saying 'they') have taken de-
light in abominable idols, so I (again emphatic) will choose.. ' then
once more we have the sentiments of 65: 12: these are the people who
did not answer the LORD's call, and did not listen when He spoke.
thus, once more we have a pro-Babylonian piece accusing the Pales-
tinians of illegimate and idolatrous religious ptactices.

Isaiah 66: 5-6. these verses are distinct from the previous verses,
and it is difficult to see any connexion between them and verse 7.
Verse 5 is a jeering challenge to men whose brethren hate them and
have cast them out in the name of God. the jeer is: if, as you say,
you are faithful worshippers of God, then let God prosper you and
glorify His name. But, says the prophet, thry (once more emphatic)
shall be ashamed, that is, the ones who have been jeering at the out-
casts will be ashamed, because there will be a roar from the city. It
will be the voice of the LORD (cf. Am. 1: 2) coming from His temple,
rendering recompense to His enemies. the two verses are pro-
Palestinian.

Isaiah 66: 7-9. these verses are closely comparable to 49: 17-21
and 54: 1, and refer to the speedy repopulation of Jerusalem when the
exiles return. this theme is carried over into the succeeding verses.
this piece is pro-Babylonian.

Isaiah 66: 10-24. there are associations in phrases with the Second
Isaiah. 'Suck the breasts' and 'milk': v. 11 and 60: 16. 'Peace like a
river': v. 12 and 48: 18. the general attitude is that of chapters 49
and 60. 'Borne on the side': v. 12 and 49: 22 and 60: 4. Jerusalem-
Zion will suck the wealth of the Gentiles. the power of the LORD
will be exercised against his enemies: v. 14 ff. and 49: 26. Further,
those who indulge in illegitimate worship in sacred gardens (cf. 65: 3)
will be destroyed. this means the Palestinians, because this is part of
the charge which the Babylonian Jews made against them. All the
Gentiles will come and behold God's glory and they will bring back
the scattered Jews in horses, in chariots, on mules and dromedaries.
then (v. 21) out of these who have been thus brought back, God will
 CHAPTER SEVEN 243

choose Levitical priests. 1 ) This we take to be a reference to the 'the

Levites the priests, the sons of Zadok' who were exiled priests and
will be chosen once more and given access to the sanctuary CZech.
3: 1-7). The new conditions shall endure for ever (v. 22), and so shall
the prosperity of the faithful, until ultimately all mankind will come
and worship. Lest. however it be thought that v. 23 is an open-
handed warm-hearted universalism, the piece closes with a gory
picture of the fate of all who have rebelled against God. The piece is
pro-Babylonian, with the door opened to such Gentiles as are properly
obedient.
We thus see that Isaiah 56-66 belong to the period following
538 B.C., when at least some of the exiles had returned to Jeruslaem,
and there were sharp contentions between the Babylonian Jews
who had returned and the Palestinian Jews who had remained in
Palestine all the time. The argument is as to who are the true People
of God. The Babylonians are in the succession of Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
the Second Isaiah and Zerubabel, Nehemiah and Ezra. The Palestin-
ians are fighting all the time against 'the establishment,' until ultimately
they withdraw and form what is known as 'the Samaritan schism.'
Both parties are represented in these chapters (eight: since 60-62 are
held to be true Second Isaiah). The teaching of the Second Isaiah has
led to strife and contention which lasted for more than one generation.

1) The Versions have 'for priests and for Levites,' as also some Hebrews MSS.
We follow the Hebrew consonants, but without the pathach of the definite article.
To make the clear distinction between priests and Levites is to anticipate a later
state of affairs.Cf. Deuteronomy which has 'the priests, the Levites' (Deut. 17: 9,
etc; Ezek. 44: 15 has 'the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok.' 'The priests the
sons of Aaron' and 'the Levites' as distinct from them, belong to the developed
P-tradition.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

JERUSALEM FROM 538 B.C. TO 397 B.C.

How did it come about that both parties and both points of view,
Palestinian and Babylonian, are found in Isaiah 56-66?
There is every indication that the triumph of Judaism with its
rigid policy of exclusiveness-the triumph, that is, of the returned
exiles, the Babylonian Jews-did not take place until 397 B.C., which
we take to be the date of Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem. This victory is
described either in Nehemiah 13 or in Ezra 9-10, whichever is the later
(but see below pp. 251 f.). There is less evidence than is generally sup-
posed of any serious strife before the arrival of Nehemiah in 445/4 B.C.
That there was contention and struggle for religious status there can
be no shadow of doubt, but there does not appear to have been any
political crisis. Most of us have given too much weight to Ezra
4: 1-6. We have not realised that there is much more opposition ex-
pressed in the English translation than there is in the Hebrew of Ezra
4: 3. Further, the theory that the breach opened wide in the time of
Zerubbabel depends also on the unity of Ezra 4: 1-6.
We deal first with the problem of Ezra 4: 1-6. Chapter 4, as it
stands, makes little sense. The times are all confused. The chapter
opens with Zerubbabel and Jeshua taking steps to build the temple.
It says that the 'people of the land' (the non-exiles, the Palestinian
Jews) did everything they could to hinder and weaken the efforts
of the 'people of Judah' (the returned exiles, the Babylonian Jews),
and that this opposition continued all the time of Cyrus and on to
the reign of Darius. In the time of Xerxes (verse 6) the Palestinians
wrote an accusation against the builders, and another complaint
(verses 7 ff) in the time of Artaxerxes, a copy of which is given, and
after it the kings' reply. Then (verse 24) it is stated that the work on
the temple ceased until the second year of Darius.
There are many strange elements in this chapter. It is composed
of bits and pieces. Verse 24 (second year of Darius) brings us back to
verses 1-3, since it was in this second year of Darius that Jeshua
and Zerubbabel became active in building the temple, urged on by
Haggai and Zechariah (Hag. 1; Zech. 4: 9). Verse 6 is dated in the
reign of Artaxerxes. Whether verse 7 has anything to do with verse
 CHAPTER EIGHT 245

6 is uncertain, but it has nothing to do with verses 8 ff. Presumably this

Artaxerxes is Artaxerxes I (Longimanus), so that here we are in the
time of Nehemiah, the period 464-424 B.C. But this section is not con-
cerned at all with the building of the temple. It is about the rebuilding
of the walls. Whether there was contention between the two parties,
Babylonian Jews and Palestinian Jews, concerning the building of
the temple, it is difficult to say; it is certain that there was considerable
trouble whilst the walls were being built.
Ezra 4: 3 is difficult. The Revised Version has: 'Ye have nothing
to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves to-
gether will build.. .' The Hebrew reads: 'Not to you and to us N~
'l~' C~~..., for we together "Tn' 'lMlN ,~ will build .. .' But the LXX
equivalents are different. Esdras B 4: 3 has 'Not to us and to you
o0X ~fL~V xlXl. ufL~v 'and 'for we together on ~fLdc; bd 1"0 1X01"0'; Esdras
A 5: 67 f. (71) has 'Not to you 00X ufL~V' and 'for we alone ~fLz~C; ~ap
fL6vOL.' Usually the phrase 'l~' C~~ N~ is compared to the idiom -il?~
,~, ,~, lit. 'what to me and to you', i.e. 'we have nothing to do with
each other' or 'this is no business of yours'. But are the two phrases
equivalent? There was nothing whatever to stop the writer saying
'What to us and to you?' The Chronicler knew the idiom (2 Chr.
35: 21), and it was well-known at all periods: Jg. 11: 12; 2 Sam.
16: 10-ten times altogether, including two without the wiiw (Jer.
2: 18; Hos. 14: 9). The idiom persisted into New Testament times:
Matt. 8: 29; Mk. 5: 7; J n. 2: 4. Compare also the Arabic mii Ii walahu.
But we do not have this idiom in Ezra 4: 3. Esdras A says clearly that
the building of the temple was definitely nothing to do with the
Palestinians, but both Esdras B and the Hebrew Ezra could mean that
the building was not the sole concern of either party, but the common
concern of both. It is true that the Arabic wa/;ad in the accusative
with suffix can mean 'his solitariness,' but the usual meaning of the
word in Hebrew is 'together' and not its opposite. It is true also that
Neh. 2: 20 says that the Palestinians (Sanballat and his allies) 'have no
portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem,' but the context is the
rebuilding of the walls, and the date is eighty years later. Ezra 4: 24
is confirmed by Haggai and Zech. 4: 9 in that the building of the house
was delayed until the second year of Darius, but neither prophet
mentions anything about opposition on the part of the Palestinians.
Consider Zech. 6: 9-15. When verse 13 says that 'the counsel
of peace shall be between them both,' who are 'the both'? The
prophet is bidden to take representatives of the returning exiles and
246 N. H. SNAITH

meet with them in the house of a certain Josiah son of Zephaniah.

The whole section is difficult and has evidently been interpreted later
differently from what was originally intended; cf. verses 11 and 14.
LXX does not recognise any of the names in verse 10 apart from that
of Josiah son of Zephaniah, but has 'rulers and capable and discerning
men.' They are apparently the representatives of the exiles. It difficult
to identify this Josiah son of Zephaniah. The tendency is to identify
this Zephaniah with the second priest who was executed by Nebuchad-
rezzar at Riblah (2 Kgs. 25: 18). In this case Josiah must have been
getting on in years, because the Riblah incident had taken place 66
years earlier. Presumably this Josiah would have been carried off to
Babylonia with the rest of the Zadokite priests of Jerusalem,l) but
his name is not in the lists, and these lists were regarded as final and
authoritative (Ezra 2: 62; Neh. 7: 64). Also, verse 10 conveys the
impression that Josiah was domiciled in Jerusalem. The section tells
of an agreement that 'they that are afar off shall come and build in
the temple of the LORD,' and the crown is to be a token, a reminder
of this arrangement. The original text mentions one crown only, 2)
made of silver and gold, and this crown is to be set on the head of the
high-priest Joshua son of Jehozadak. The prophet is now to say to
Joshua, 'Behold a man whose name is Branch, and from his place he
shall branch out, and he shall build the temple of the LORD.' The
last part of the verse looks like an addition, because the next verse
continues: 'and he (emphatic) shall build the temple of the LORD and
he shall bear the glory and sit (enthroned) and rule upon his throne, and
shall be priest on his throne, and there shall be counsel of peace be-
tween the two of them.' LXX has two crowns and two thrones with
the priest sitting on the throne 'on his right,' but the natural meaning
of the Hebrew is that Joshua is the Branch and the crown is set on
his head. 3) The Branch is the n~:!t, the new shoot out of the old vine
stock Israel, LXX's 'dayspring' &VI't."t"OA~ of the new era (cf. also Lk.
1: 78) the 'my servant' of Zech. 3: 8. Joshua the high-priest is the
new ruler, the successor of David for it is of him that the messianic
term 'Branch' is used. But who is the Branch in Zech. 3: 8? Once

1) LXX thought so, since it has TOU 'ijxoVTO<;; for the Hebrew 'N:l 'WN at the end
of the verse.
2) The Masoretic text has the plural 'crowns' in vv. 11 and 14, but it is plain
in each case that the singular was intended originally and that the two plurals are
a later interpretation.
3) The 'them' has been inserted by the English translators. There is no objective
pronoun in the Hebrew text.
 CHAPTER ElGTH 247

again we are of the opinion that it is Joshua the high-priest. l ) Zerub-

babel is not mentioned in chapter 3 just as he is not mentioned in
chapter 6 and Joshua is not mentioned in chapter 4. This is very
strange. The two are never mentioned together in Zechariah 1-8 but
always (except in the last three verses) mentioned together in Haggai.
Zech. 3 is the story of the establishment of Joshua as the indubitable
high-priest in spite of his having been in an unclean land (the filthy
garments). The verdict in the heavenly trial is that he is to keep God's
'charge' (n.,~TV~, technical term in the P-tradition for service within
the temple), and to have right of access (c'~'i1~, verse 7) among those
that officiate at the altar. Verse 8 says that the others who are present
are 'men of portent' nD'~, that is, they are men involved in an event
which is a sign of things to come, cf. 2 Chr. 32: 24 31. The portent
has to do with the arrival (verse 7b: I will cause to come) of the
Branch, and apparently Joshua is the Branch. The significance of the
stone in verse 9 has been the subject of considerable discussion (see
the commentaries), but the most satisfactory suggestion is that it is an
ornament for the costume of the high-priest. The result of all this is
that the iniquity of that land (Babylonia) will be removed forthwith,
and the chapter ends with a picture of idyllic peace. With this promise
of peace, compare 6: 13 with its promise of peace 'between them both'
(see p. 245 above), and also the agreement that 'they that are far off
shall come and build in the temple of the LORD,' i.e. they are to
take part in the building.
Again, consider Zech. 6: 1-8, which concludes: 'they that go to
the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.' The
usual interpretation is that 'the north country' means Babylon, but in
this case what does 'the south country' mean (verse 6)? Commentators
from WELLHAUSEN onwards seek to emend the text in verses 6 and 7,
and they send the chariots east and west as well as north and south,
whereas the Hebrew text sends two to the north, one to the south
and the fourth on a general roving commission. It is true that often
'north country' means Babylon CZech. 3: 6), but any explanation
of 'north country' in 6: 8 should also be in line with some parallel
explanation of 'south country.' Our explanation is that 'north' means
Israel, the Palestinian Jews, those who had not been out of the country,
and that 'south' means the Judaeans, the 'Babylonians', the returned

1) It appears to be the case that these chapters in Zech. 1-8 have been subjected
to slight changes in order to make Joshua and Zerubbabel throughout to be the
'two sons of oil' (two anointed ones?) of Zech. 4: 14.
248 N. H. SNAITH

exiles, and that this section is talking about an understanding between

the two parties. Compare Ps. 89: 13 (Eng. 12) and see Studies in the
Psalter (1934), p. 43. See also Zech. 8: 13 where the prophet thinks of
both the house of Judah and the house of Israel as being a blessing,
and none must imagine evil against his neighbour.
Our solution, therefore is: there was at first a sharp contention
between the returning exiles and those who had not been deported,
but this was (for the time being) settled amicably. Joshua the son of
the exiled Zadokite Jehozadak received the high-priesthood which his
fathers had held, and the Zadokites obtained right of access to the
altar among the other (Aaronite) priests who were there. Perhaps
Haggai's appeal to both Joshua the high-priest and Zerubbabel the
governor marks this rapprochement, whereas the fact that neither are
mentioned together in Zechariah 1-8 reflects the prior state of affairs.
We would explain Ezra 4: 3 and its variations in LXX on the basis
that the Chronicler (or the editor of Ezra-Nehemiah) thought that
the enmity between the two parties began with the building of the
temple, and he was reading back the enmity which broke out with
the building of the wall. He brings the two together in Ezra 5: 3:
' ... to build this house, and to finish this wall.' Whether anything was
accomplished in the building of the temple under Sheshbazzar is open
to doubt, but it is certain that the project was actively taken in hand in
520 B.C., the second year of Darius I (Hystaspis). We know that the
Chronicler thought in terms of four Persian kings, possibly because his
sources metioned only the names, Darius, Cyrus, Artaxerxes, Xerxes,
and this involved him in much confusion of dates and the sequence of
events. It is probable also that in his sources concerned with the
building of the temple he found 'the second year' without any specifi-
cation as to whose second year it was. He therefore confused the second
year of Darius (when the activity on the temple site took place) with
the second year of Cyrus. Thus we have two beginnings in building
the temple. Similarly 'building' appeared in his sources without spec-
ifying whether it was the building of the temple or the building of the
wall, and that brought about another muddle. Thus he writes of
'the days of Zerubbabel' and 'the days of Nehemiah' as though they
were identical, Neh. 12: 47. We shall see later how his identification
of 'Artaxerxes' in his sources always as Artaxerxes I gave rise to
another muddle.
After all, the Chronicler was writing the story of the rise and
triumph of Judaism with its exclusive Habdalah policy. He is not
 CHAPTER EIGHT 249

interested in the northe.rn tribes, but only in the tribe of Judah (with
Benjamin). He regards the northerners of his day as apostates, semi-
heathen and wholly heathen, not in any way whatsoever the People
of the LORD. They are the 'people of the land,' outside the promises,
by no means partakers in the covenant. Nothing is more natural
than for him to read back the story of the quarrel into the immediate
post-exilic period and to make it a religious and political quarrel of the
first degree from the beginning. There was indeed initial disagreement
and sharp contention together with a certain amount of violence in
words, but there was a temporary truce. It was not 'war to the death'
until Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem and began to rebuild the city
walls. It was then that the clash came. For nearly a hundred years there
had been a 'cold war' with an occasional thaw. It was this period which
accounts for the presence of elements in chapters 56-66 representing
both parties. If the quarrel was as severe in Zerubbabel's time as many
suppose it is unlikely that both parties would be represented in these
eleven chapters. It is our opinion that the same mixture of contrary
opinions is to be found in the Elohist Psalter.!)
There certainly was a clash when Nehemiah arrived. He made his
plans with the utmost secrecy (Neh. 2: 12-16), so that Sanballat did
not know the wall was going to be rebuilt until the building of it was
actually commenced (Neh. 4: 1). Sanballat and his friends were
worried when they heard about Nehemiah's appointment as governor
of Jerusalem (Neh. 5: 14), because he was come 'to seek the welfare
of the children ofIsrael' (Neh. 2: 10)-so at least the Memoirs say-
but they did not know at first about the wall. When they did hear about
the wall, they forthwith construed it as rebellion against Persia. We
are now in the realm of 'politics pure and simple,' though by no means
pure and certainly far from simple. It is difficult to decide whether
Sanballat really believed what he said to the Persian king or whether
he was seeking to cause Nehemiah the utmost inconvenience. Perhaps
Nehemiah expected trouble from the beginning and took no pains
to avoid it. The whole problem of the relations between Sanballat
and Nehemiah, especially the political aspect of them is reviewed by
H. H. ROWLEY in an article 'Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple' in
the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 38, no. 1 (Sept. 1955),
pp. 166-198. See also A. E. COWLEY, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth
Century B.C. (1923), p. 110, where he says 'no religious schism had

1) Studies in the Psalter, pp. 9-46.

250 N. H. SNAITH

as yet (408 B.C.) taken place.' Whether or not this great clash of 445
B.C. was the first clash depends on our view of the history of 538 B.C.
to (say) c. 390 B.C. The decisive clash came either in the events of
Nehemiah 13 or in the events of Ezra 9-10, which ever is later.
Which is later? Nehemiah 13 or Ezra 9-10? Who was it that was the
effective founder of Judaism? Was it Ezra or was it Nehemiah? If
the final success is that given in Ezra 9-10, then Ezra was the founder
of Judaism, and Nehemiah's success in Nehemiah 13 was temporary.
If the final success is that given in Nehemiah 13, then Nehemiah was
the founder of Judaism, and Ezra's success in Ezra 9-10 was tempo-
rary. One or the other is right-unless JOHN BRIGHT's solution (see
p. 255 below) can be accepted, in which case both are right 'and all
must have prizes.'
There are two ways in which the biblical material concerning
Nehemiah and Ezra has been arranged. One is that with which most
people are familiar, the order in the Hebrew Bible, according to
which Ezra arrived first and the final triumph is that of Nehemiah,
related in Neh. 13. But there is a second order, that of the LXX in
Esdras A (1 Esdras). Here the order is (using the Hebrew Bible
references): 2 Chronicles 35, 36; Ezra 1; 4: 7-24; the story of the
three children; Ezra 2: 1-4: 5; Ezra 5-10; Nehemiah 7: 73-8: 12. This
story ends with the triumph of Ezra. We would say that the original
order of the Chronicler is that of Esdras A with the rest of the present
book of Nehemiah following Ezra 6.1) This order gives a complete
and intelligible account of the establishment of Judaism and its
exclusive Habdalah policy. We have Ezra 1 (return under Shesh-
bazzar); Ezra 4: 7-24 (early attempts at rebuilding); Ezra 2: 1-4: 5
(return under Zerubbabel and the building of the temple); Ezra 5-10
(building of the temple); Neh.1: 1-7: 72 and 9-13 (Nehemiah's ac-
tivities); Ezra 7: 1-10 and 8-10; Neh. 7: 73-8: 13 (Ezra's activities),
plus Ezra 8: 14-18. This is the Chronicler's original account of the
attempts to establish post-exilic Judaism and of the final success.
Sheshbazzar tried and failed. Zerubbabel and Jeshua, urged on by
Haggai and Zechariah, managed to get the temple built. Nehemiah
got the city walls rebuilt in spite of considerable opposition from
within and without the city. During his second term of office as
governor he established with considerable violence a policy against
mixed marriages, here also with considerable opposition from within.
1) For a full discussion see 'The Date of Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem,' ZA W 63
(NF 22), 1951, pp. 53-66.
 CHAPTER EIGHT 251

But this also failed; he never received support from the priesthood.
Finally Ezra came and, with strong support from the high-priest of
the time, succeeded in establishing once and for all the Habdalah
policy based on a combined religious and political basis. The story of
the Chronicler was written in the full flush of enthusiasm soon after
the success of Ezra's policy in 397 B.C., just as, we would hold,
the first edition of the Book of Kings (ending at the word 'Moses' in
2 Kgs. 23: 25) was written at the height of King Josiah's success.
Each writer had his hero, the first had Josiah, the second had Ezra.
The Greek Esdras A represents the tradition that Ezra was the founder
and establisher of Judaism.
But there was another tradition, and this tradition was that Nehe-
miah, not Ezra, was the founder and establisher of Judaism. This
tradition is represented by the editor who changed the order of the
narrative into that which is now found in the Hebrew Bible. This
change of order was done very neatly. and the discrepancies are not
immediately obvious. Ben Sira followed this tradition. See Ecclus.
49: 11-13, where he lists among his famous men, Zerubbabel, Jeshua
son of Josedek, and Nehemiah. There is no mention of Ezra. An-
other writer in this tradition is the author of Enoch 89:72 ('three of
those sheep ... began to build up all that was fallen down of that
house'), and yet another was the author of 2 Maccabees 1 and 2.
S. GRANHILD 1) has maintained that the Chronicler himself used no
Nehemiah material at all. This involves following the Greek Esdras A
entirely, which contains no reference to Nehemiah as governor. The
story of Nehemiah's activities is in Neh. 1: 1-7: 72 and 9-13. But the
strength of the Nehemiah tradition makes it almost as certain that
Nehemiah existed as the strength of the Ezra tradition makes it
likely that Ezra existed. We have to say 'almost' because of the Sa-
maritan tradition of 'the wicked Ezra.' GRANHILD supposes a 'post-
Chronist' editor who inserted the Nehemiah material and also inserted
all the Aramaic. This editor evidently believed that it was Nehemiah
who was ultimately successful since he put Neh. 13 last. But if he also
inserted the Aramaic portions, then he was responsible for Ezra
7: 11-26, the passage which contains the account of the astonishing
powers which were granted to Ezra. This does not make sense. It is
much more likely that Nehemiah existed equally with Ezra, and that

1) Ezrabogens Literaere Genesis, 1949. See also BENTZEN, Introduction to the Old
Testament, vol. 2, p. 210.
252 N. H. SNAITH

Nehemiah's actiV1ties were in the Chronicler's original story and

followed Ezra 6.
Thus we take the position that Nehemiah came to Jerusalem in the
twentieth year of Artaxerxes I (Longimanus) 445/4 B.C., that he
returned later, and that Ezra arrived in the seventh year of Artaxerxes
II (Mnemon) 398/7 B.c. This gives a period of nearly 100 years for
the two strands of Isaiah 56-66 to find a place in the composite
collection, with a possibility of the period extending up to 140 years.
The traditional view (Ezra 457 B.C. and Nehemiah 445/4 B.C.)
held the field until the time of A. VAN HOONACKER in 1890. It was he
who introduced the idea of Artaxerxes II into the discussion. 1) He
supposed that Ezra made a visit to Jerusalem during Nehemiah's
second term as governor. This part of VAN HOONACKER'S theory is now
generally rejected, following L. W. BATTEN, Ezra and Nehemiah (ICC,
1913), but see JOHN BRIGHT (p. 255 below). Many scholars follow
the rest of VAN HOONACKER'S hypothesis and give the date of Ezra's
arrival as 398/7 B.C. This means that Nehemiah and Ezra never met,
and that there was a whole genration between the times of their
activities in Jerusalem. French and British scholars generally have
followed VAN HOONACKER with BATTEN'S modification, though there
has been in recent years a revival of the traditional date for Ezra
among 'conservative evangelicals' such as W. M. E. SCOTT and J.
STAFFORD WRIGHT. German scholars in general have rejected the
idea of an early date (485/7) for Ezra, but equally are not enamoured of
the late date (398/7). They have sought to find another date for Ezra's
arrival, some time when Nehemiah was not in the city, say 432 B.C.
or some such date. Such theories involve a change of text as well as a
dislocation of the text.
One of the most important aspects of the problem resolves itself
into answering the question: Was Ezra active in Jerusalem whilst
Nehemiah was there in the city? The great difficulty of the traditional
dating is that Ezra appears never to have heard of Nehemiah. If they
both had the authority they are said to have had and if they were both
working to the same end, then why in the world did they not collabo-
rate? There were times when each one of them was in such dire difficul-

1) 'Nehemie et Esdras, une nouvelle hypothese sur la chronologie de l'epoque

de la restauration', in Le Museon (1890), pp. 151-184, 317-351, etc. See also his
other writings listed by H. H. ROWLEY, 'The Chronological Order of Ezra and
Nehemiah' in the Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume (1948), Part I, pp. 117-148.
which contains in the notes a comprehensive bibliography.
 CHAPTER EIGHT 253

ty that he would surely have clutched even at a straw, let alone any
one who had virtually complete authority. If they were indeed to-
gether in the city, then we have a case of departmental government
par excellence!, a state of affairs where one department acts in complete
ignorance of anything the other may do.
There are three places where the two men are mentioned together
in the same context: Neh. 8: 9; 12: 26; 12: 36.
Let us first consider N eh. 8: 9. The parallel is the Greek Esdras A
9: 49, where the name 'Nehemiah' does not occur. The Greek tells that
Attharates (which is an attempted transcription of the Hebrew
~nrzj"l"l:"I-the governor, a word which evidently Greek did not under-
stand) spoke to Esdras, the Levites and all the people. Neh. 8: 9
identifies Nehemiah as the governor and says that he and Ezra and
the Levites spoke to the people. Did Esdras A leave the name out?
Or did the editor of Neh 8: 9 put it in? The answer is complicated
by Esdras A 5: 40 which has 'Nehemias and Attharias,' whilst the
corresponding Ezra 2: 63 has 'the Tirshatha.' But that cannot possibly
be Nehemiah, because Ezra 2 belongs to the time of Zerubbabel.
Esdras A has certainly wrongly inserted Nehemiah here. The governor
of Ezra 2: 63 was Zerubbabel: cf. Hag. 1: 1. It would appear that in
both Ezra-Nehemiah and in Esdras A there has been a tendency at
work always to identify the governor as Nehemiah and equally to
identify Nehemiah as the governor, and that this even brought the
name 'Nehemiah' into Esdras A in one place where plainly it is wrong.
The problem of Neh. 8: 9 must remain unresolved; there are too
many editorial cross-currents.
Next consider Neh. 12: 36. This is the end of the list of those
who took part in the procession at the dedication of the wall. One
company went one way 'and after them went Hoshaiah and half the
princes of Judah' (12: 31 f.), and the other company went the other
way 'and I (Nehemiah) after them,' 12: 38. This looks like an adequate
and complete arrangement, but the end of verse 36 says 'and Ezra
the scribe was before them,' that is, at the head of the first company.
This is not the way to treat such a great man as Ezra. He was either
the most important member of the community or he was next in
importance after the governor. At the very least his name ought to
have come in with that of Hoshaiah in verse 32, but not at the tail of
the whole list with the strange statement that 'he was before them'.
This is too much of an addendum altogether. The mention of Ezra is
an interpolation.
Supplements to Vetus Testamentum XIV I7
254 N. H. SNAITH

Lastly, Neh. 12: 26. This is as clear case of editorial interpolation

as can be found. The Hebrew syntax just will not do. Some editor
has added 'and of Ezra the scribe' because he thought the two men
were contemporaries. Possibly this is the reason for anomalies else-
where.
It has been pointed out 1) that the powers which were granted
to Ezra as detailed in Ezra 7: 17-27 are so wide and all-inclusive
that they clash with the powers given to the governor Nehemiah.
In any case Ezra did not use these powers. In our view it is precarious
to rest any weight on the Memoirs either of Ezra or of Nehemiah.
If Ezra 7: 17-27 is accurate and historical, then it is impossible for both
Ezra and Nehemiah to have been in Jerusalem at the same time and
both active; nor is it possible to imagine either of them being there
and not being active. Neither was that sort of man. Whether Ezra
ever had these powers may be doubted, but if he did have them and
used them, then Nehemiah was not there at the time. But this is all
beside the point, because we are of the opinion that MOWINCKEL was
right when he said 2) that these memoirs are actually memorials,
written after the oriental (Persian) pattern to preserve the memory of
great ones, especially in contrast to the wickedness of their enemies.
The Memoirs of Ezra in particular are not an autobiography, but a
memorial, a devotional legend (MOWINCKEL). The Ezra legend had
already and early begun to grow. By the time of 2 Mace. 1: 18-36 the
Nehemiah legend had developed also. Our judgment is that the
arguments which have been put forward, both in favour and against
Nehemiah and Ezra being contemporaries, tend to be indecisive.
All fall short of definite proof. But the clearest thing that emerges is
that it is unlikely that Nehemiah and Ezra were in Jerusalem together
or had anything at all to do with each other.
If therefore Nehemiah and Ezra were not in Jerusalem at the same
time, another date has to be found for the arrival of one or other of
them. If Nehemiah 13 is to be regarded as the final act in the drama
and Nehemiah as the founder of Judaism, then scholars like W. A. L.
ELMSLIE 3 ) may be right in making Nehemiah arrive during the reign
of Artaxerxes II (ca. 380 B.C.), but this solution raises new complica-
tions because Eliashib was high-priest in Nehemiah's time. If Ezra is to

1) Most recently by H. H. ROWLEY in the Ignace Goldziher Memorial. p. 142

2) Statholderen Nehemie, 1916; Ezra den Skriftlarde, 1916. Also BENTZEN,
Introduction to the Old Testament, I, 1948, p. 247; II, pp. 209 f.
3) How Came Our Faith (1949), p. 340.
 CHAPTER EIGHT 255

be regarded as the founder of Judaism, then it is best, as most agree,

to regard Nehemiah's arrival as a fixed point, 445/4 B.C in the reign
of Artaxerxes I. It will still be possible to regard Nehemiah 13 as the
final act in the drama, if we can find a date for Ezra's arrival before
(say) 426 B.C The date of Nehemiah's return for his second term as
governor must be at the very latest a little while before the death of
Artaxerxes I, which was in 424 B.C If this return was in 426 B.C, this
gives us six years whilst Nehemiah was absent from Jerusalem,
432-426 B.C, and Ezra must be fitted in here. Thus KOSTERS proposed
to read 'thirty-second' instead of 'seventh' in Ezra 7: 7 f. There is no
justification for this change except that, if Ezra is to be fitted into this
period, a change has to be made. This makes Ezra arrive in 432 B.C
as soon as Nehemiah is out of the way, but it also means that Ezra
9-10 is not nearly as final and complete a victory as the chapters them-
selves would lead us to believe. BERTHOLET, KENNETT, ALBRIGHT (in
1932), RUDOLPH and WEISER all hold that Ezra was active in Jerusalem
between 433/2 and (say) 426 B.C A variant of this solution has been
proposed by BEWER, ALBRIGHT (in 1946) and BRIGHT, namely, to
read 'thirty-seventh' instead of 'seventh'. This proposed emendation
involves less disturbance in the text than the other, and if a solution
has to be made involving an emendation, then this is the one to make.
It makes Ezra arrive during Nehemiah's second term in 428 B.C,
and 'allows us to resolve the perennial problem of the relationship of
Ezra's reforms to Nehemiah's in a manner which is, I believe, both
plausible and faithful to the evidence ... Nehemiah tells his own side of
it and claims the credit; the Chroaicler, as one would expect, gives
the credit to Ezra.' 1)
Our judgement is that the 397 B.C date is the most likely date for
the arrival of Ezra, though the case as put forward by JOHN BRIGHT
(op. cit., pp. 375-386) is powerful. The 397 B.C date involves following
the order of the Greek Esdras A. It involves taking Ezra 9-10 to be
later than Nehemiah 13-BRIGHT makes them more or less contempor-
aneous by thinking of Nehemiah writing his own Memoirs and taking
all the credit to himself. This view certainly is plausible, but the whole
story, in our view, makes even more sense if Ezra's activity is regarded
as following that of Nehemiah, and particularly if a few years passed
between the two periods of activity. Nehemiah certainly ejected all
those who had married foreign (i.e. Palestinian, non-exiles) wives and

1) BRIGHT, A History of Israel (1960), p. 386.

256 N. H. SNAITH

all foreigners, but evidently they were all there when Ezra arrived.
When Ezra had completed his first four days in Jerusalem, there came
to him certain princes who told him that there were Israelites, both
priests and Levites, who were allied in marriage with 'the people of
the land.' That is, certain of the temple personnel had intermarried
with families who had not been in exile in Babylonia. There were
indeed four members of the high-priestly family among these (Ezra
10:18), who voluntarily put away their wives (10: 19). The com-
plainants also alleged that certain princes and deputies were leaders
in this intermarriage policy, Ezra 9: 1-2. Ezra was distressed beyond
measure. He rent his garments, plucked out his hair, sat amazed
until the time of the evening offering, and then prayed in deep peni-
tence and anguish. Meanwhile Shecaniah son of Jehiel of the Elam
family took action. Whilst Shecaniah and his associates were taking
action, Ezra retired to fast and pray in the chamber of Jehohanan
son of Elisahib. It is difficult to recognise in Neh. 13 as alternative
account of all this, even allowing for Nehemiah's zeal in taking the
credit to himself.
This Jehohanan was actually the grandson of Eliashib. It is not
stated in Ezra 10 that Jehohanan was high-priest at the time, but he
certainly was high-priest ca. 401 B.C. We know this from Josephus
(Ant. Iud. XI, vii, 1), for it was at that time that Jehohanan the high-
priest murdered his brother Jesus (Jeshua) in the temple during a
quarrel about the high-priesthood. Thus, if Ezra arrived in Jerusalem
in 397 B.C., then Jehohanan was high-priest at the time and Ezra had
his full support. Here Ezra was more fortunate than Nehemiah had
been, since Nehemiah did not have the support of Eliashib over this
matter of mixed marriages (Neh. 13: 4). Josephus also says that
Bagohi had promised Jeshua the high-priesthood, and that Bagohi
was so incensed at the murder of his nominee that he forced his way
into the temple and inflicted a heavy fine on the Jews. This Bagohi
is apparently the governor of Samaria mentioned in the Sachau
(Elephantine) papyrus i, 13, 14. Josephus identified him with the
famous general of Artaxerxes III (Ochus), but this cannot possibly
be right, because Artaxerxes III reigned from 358-338 B.C. and it was
it was he who deported many Jews to Hyrcania and the country
round the Caspian Sea.
In Studies in the Psalter, p. 13 f., I sought to identify this murdered
brother of Jehohanan whose name was Jeshua. If Jeshua was a
brother of Jehohanan and had any semblance of a claim on the high-
 CHA'I>TER EIGHT 257

priesthood, then he must have been a son of Joiada. Jeshua was a

family name, since it was a Jeshua who was restored to the high-
priesthood in the first days of the return, Zech. 3: 1-10. It is likely,
therefore, that this J eshua was the elder of the two brothers. This
would account for him pressing his claim so strongly. It also means
that he was not in Jerusalem when Jehohanan succeeded to the high-
priesthood. Was he actually that son of Jehoiada who had married a
daughter of Sanballat? Was he therefore the man whom Nehemiah
drove out in 432 B.C. (Neh. 13: 28)? There is every likelihood that
this identification is sound, and it is the situation thus involved,
combined with MOWINCKEL'S explanation of the two sets of memoirs
(p. 254 above), which seems to us to turn the scale in favour of a
397 B.C. date for Ezra's return against the 428 B.C. date so powerfully
argued by JOHN BRIGHT.
We know that there was extreme political rivalry when Ezra arrived
in Jerusalem. Ezra had scarcely had time to turn round before a group
of princes and deputies were seeking his support against their op-
ponents. Jehohanan was against the mixed-marriage party. Of course
he was against mixed marriages if his elder brother was involved in
one. How could J ehohanan retain the high-priesthood if the mixed-
marriage party got control? The anti-mixed marriage party, as we
view the situation, were appealing for Ezra's help in driving out the
last remnants of Jeshua's supporters. They appealed to Ezra on
religious grounds but with political motives. Whether Ezra's motives
for supporting them were in any way political, we cannot say. He
certainly supported them from religious motives. He may have been a
priestly diplomat of the medieval type. He may have been a deeply
religious man who was 'used' by the politicians. Both situations have
arisen more than once in human history. and doubtless they will arise
again. Probably Ezra was 'used.' He did not use any special authorita-
tive powers, and he retired into seclusion to pray whilst the politicians
acted. But whichever way it was, Ezra and his supporters settled the
matter once and for all. This is true on both the 397 B.C. theory and
the 428 B.C. theory. Nehemiah brought the rivalry to a head because
that was the only way he could get the city walls rebuilt and lay any
sort of foundation for the future prosperity of the city. After his
departure from Jerusalem at the end of his first term of office, one
of Eliashib's grandsons married Sanballat's daughter, and Eliashib
allowed his ally Tobiah to live in appartments within the temple
precincts. Apparently this was the Tobiah who was Sanballat's
258 N. H. SNAITR

ally during Nehemiah's first governorship (Neh. 2: 10; 4: 7; etc.).

Nehemiah threw them out bag and baggage when he returned in (?)
426 B.C. But some years later this Jeshua was back again seeking to
obtain the high-priesthood, to which as an elder son of Joiada he
believed he had some right. 'fhe letter from Elephantine ensures that
Jehohanan was high-priest in 407 B.C. Jeshua was murdered some-
what later than this time, which most likely was not long after the
death of his father J oiada.
Ezra succeeded where Nehemiah failed because he (Ezra) had the
full support of the regnant high-priest. Nehemiah never had proper
support from Eliashib. Eliashib was far too much involved with
Nehemiah's opponents, and had far too many family ties with them.
Certainly when Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem we find a grandson
married to the daughter of his chief enemy, and that enemy's second-
in-command installed by Eliashib in the very temple itself. Nehemiah
was powerful enough to put a stop to this, but there is every likelihood
that as soon as Nehemiah's strong hand was removed, the whole
situation changed, and the mixed-marriage party gained more influence
until at the death of the high-priest Joiada they were in a position
to take active steps to replace Jehohanan with Jeshua. With the death
of Jeshua there could be no doubt but that the anti-mixed marriage
party was the winning side. 'fhis explains why it was that such a large
number of deputies and princes were willing to submit to the demands
of Ezra and his supporters (Ezra 10: 18-44) even though some of
them had children by these 'foreign' wives. I ) Only four held out
against Ezra and J ehohanan. Their names were Jonathan, J ahzeiah,
Meshullam and Shabbathai the Levite (Ezra 10: 15). 'Let their names
be remembered for good'- to misquote and misapply Neh. 13: 31.
It ought not to occasion any surprise that members of the high-
priestly family and especially the Jerusalem priests generally should
be luke-warm for the reforms of Nehemiah and Ezra considering the
basic exclusive emphasis involved. We must remember that one-
third of the post-exilic priesthood was Aaronite claiming descent
from Ithamar the younger son of Aaron, whilst two-thirds were
Zadokite claiming descent from Eleazar the older surviving son of
Aaron (1 Chron. 24: 3-4). In spite of the fact that the P-tradition
refers to the priests as 'the sons of Aaron' (Lev. 1: 5, etc.), the 'cove-
nant of everlasting priesthood' is with Phinehas son of Eleazar

1) Perhaps there is a reference to this in Mal. 2: 10-4: 13, especially 2: 13-14.

 CHAPTER EIGHT 259

(Num. 25: 13), and it was Eleazar who was 'the priest' (Num. 26: 63;
cf. 20: 22-29), and not Ithamar. Thus the high-priestly family was
Zadokite and had been in exile in Babylon (Zech. 3, etc.), and with
them were two-thirds of the priesthood. But there was one-third of
the priesthood who were not Zadokites. Their pre-exilic ancestors had
not been priests at Jerusalem, and none of their families had been
exiles in Babylon. They were Palestinian Jews and naturally had
married 'foreign' women. A compromise was reached and both
groups were admitted as Aaronic priests, but the pure-race policy
was not enforced until Jehohanan's murder of his brother. Ezra's
prayers and Shecaniah and his associates all combined to clear the
last survivors of the mixed-marriage party out of the city once and
for all. The Palestinian Aaronites had to submit or go. The great
majority submitted. It is a strange commentary on the exclusive
nature of post-exilic Judaism with its separation from the heathen
and its 'holy', separated priesthood that the very priests themselves
were one-third 'foreign.'

At first Nehemiah received good support from Eliashib the high-

priest. Eliashib the high-priest and his fellow priests took their full
share in the building of the wall. They built the Sheep-gate, laid its
beams ,m,p, set up its doors, and built part of the wall as far as the
Tower of the Hundred and the Tower of Hananel and sanctified it,
Neh. 3: 1. What trouble Nehemiah had at this stage was with Sanbal-
lat, Neh. 4. Nehemiah soon found himself involved in trouble of
another sort, but again this was no trouble which involved any dispute
between Nehemiah and Eliashib. This time it was economic trouble
(Neh. 5), and the trouble was with Jewish nobles and deputies. The
complainants were 'the people and their wives' who were many and
could not get food. Some said they had to borrow money in order to
pay taxes. Some said they were having to mortgage their fields and
vineyards to get food. It had all involved slavery for their sons and
daughters, and in the end the loss of their property. It is difficult to
decide who were the people who were being maltreated, whether they
were descendants of the returned exiles or whether they were 'the
people of the land,' descendants of those who had not been deported
to Babylon. But there are two verses which suggest that perhaps
Nehemiah was seeking to help 'the people of the land.' In Neh. 5: 5
the unfortunates say: 'Our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our
children as their children'-which seems a strange thing to say unless
260 N. H. SNAITH

somebody had been denying it, and who would deny it except Baby-
lonian Jews? The other verse is Neh. 5: 17 where Nehemiah describes
those who ate at his table: a hundred and fifty of the Jews and rulers,
'besides those that came to us from among the heathen that are about
us'. This last group were distinct from 'the Jews.' The assumption is
that they were from 'the people of the land,' descendants of the Pales-
tinian Israelites who had never been deported.
The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that at first Nehemiah
did not favour the Habdalah policy of strict separtaion to the extent
that has generally been supposed. Certainly on his first visit he does
not seem to have taken any steps to turn any Palestinians out of city
and nation, provided they were loyal to him and willing to help in
making Jerusalem secure. Indeed he was ready to welcome them if
they came with good intent. He fed some of them at his own table.
He regarded it as his business to get the wall rebuilt in order to
ensure some sort of security. He knew that the city could never
prosper until the walls were rebuilt. Sanballat's opposition was politi-
cal. A walled Jerusalem was a menace, since it was very difficult to
capture a fortified and well-defended Jerusalem. It took even the
Romans under Titus five months in spite of dissensions among the
defenders. The city seems to have held out for a long time under
Hezekiah against the Assyrians. Nehemiah had enough enemies
without making any more. His hatred was directed against Sanballat
and his supporters.
But when Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem in (say) 426 B.C. he
found that Eliashib was in alliance with Tobiah and had lodged him
in the temple buildings, the very room where the perquisites of the
priests and Levites were stored. Further, Eliashib's grandson had
married Sanballat's daughter. He found that the levites who served
in the temple had not been getting their proper supplies and had been
driven out of the city. He restored that situation; he threw out Tobiah
and his goods and chattels after him; he drove out Eliashib's grandson,
and forbade all marriage with 'foreigners.' This was the full Habdalah
policy with a vengeance, but it belongs to Nehemiah's second term as
governor and not to his first term. Further, he was driven to it
because he could not maintain his political independence against
Sanballat if the high-priest's family were so closely allied with him.
That marriage must have taken place whilst Nehemiah was away. It
could scarcely have taken place during the time when the walls were
being rebuilt when all the plots and counter-plots were taking place.
 CHAPTER EIGHT 261

It could scarcely have taken place without Nehemiah's knowledge if

he was in the city, and it could not have taken place with his consent.
It is dangerous to be certain of these things. The ways of politicians
are strange and sometimes tortuous, and when the princes of the
church are also politicians still stranger things can take place. There is
no need to assume that anything else took place in order to make
Nehemiah take this action. To find one's chief enemy allied in marriage
to the chief-priest and one's second enemy installed in comfortable
quarters in the temple buildings-these two things are enough to
account for the most violent action. But apparently, as soon as Nehe-
miah was out of the way, the mixed marriages again became allowable.
When the final crisis came with the arrival of Ezra, there were four
members of the high-priestly family involved in mixed marriages:
Massaiah, Eliezer, Jarib and Gedaliah, and there were thirteen other
priests involved, two from the house of Immer, five from the house
of Harim, and six from the house of Pashur (Ezra 10: 20-22). These
'houses' were the 16th, the 3rd and the 5th course 1) (1 Chr. 24: 7-18).
All these four courses are in the lists of Ezra 2: 1 an d 2: 36-39. The
hard core of opposition consisted, then, of only seventeen priests
plus the four men mentioned in Ezra 10: 15, out of a total number of
4289 priests (Ezra 2: 37-39). There was also a number of levites,
singers and laity, Ezra 10: 23-44. The mixed-marriage party would
naturally be small by this time, since Jeshua was dead. If the number
had reached any serious dimensions, their suppression would not
have been as easy as evidently it was.
As we have said, the two groups lived together more or less
harmoniously for a hundred years, from a little after 538 B.C. when
the initial compromise was reached to 426 B.C., and possibly, after a
short time (if we accept the 397 B.C. date for Ezra's arrival), for an-
other twenty years. This is how it came about that the different points
of view could both be embodied in Isaiah 56-66. It was a hundred
years of argument, but not open conflict until Nehemiah came back
again for his second term.
This means that the nationalist elements in the Second Isaiah tri-
umphed and became the official policy of Judaism. The contrary
'universalist' point of view never wholly died, though sometimes the
'stream ran thinly.' This is the stream which R. LEVY calls 'the

1) Pashur is another name for the 5th course, that of Malchiah: compare 1 Chr
24: 8-14 with 1 Chr. 9: 12 and Neh. 11: 12.
262 N. H. SNAITH

Deutero-Isaianic stream,' 1) by which he means the universalist

stream, since he holds with other scholars that the Second Isaiah
was a universalist. He gives instances of this from the Talmud and
the earlier Midrashim (pp. 53-77), and also in mediaeval and modern
Jewish Literature. But the official position has always been and still
is nationalist and exclusive. Even Christianity had its early struggles
against this attitude. It was thanks to St. Paul that the universalism
which Jesus of Nazareth realised was inherent in the work of the
Servant of the Lord triumphed over the Judaising leaders of the early
Church. The battle is always having to be refought.

1) Deutero-Isaiah (1925), p. 54.

 INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES
(excluding Isa. 40-66)

Genesis Judges Jeremiah

1: 4, 6, 7, 14, 18 224 11 :12 245 15:6 152
7:11 224 16:2 203 23:5 203
24:67 152 19:3 152 24:2 170
29:30f 159n 19:26 203 24:5-7 170, 180
34: 3 152 24:10 170
44: 3 203 1 Samuel 25 :11f 180
50:21 153 14:27 203 29:10 180
14:29 203 30,31 172
Exodus 14:36 203 31 :8 209
3 232 15:29 152 33:15 203
8 232 17:22 203 40:12 226
13:17 152 25:34,36 203 43:5 226
15 144 29:10 203 51:34 192
15:4, 5 192
21:30 159 2 Samuel Ezekiel
26:9 179n 2:32 203 1 154n, 178
28:16 179n 14:27 225 2:3 227
33:13 236 16:10 245 2:6 171
Leviticus 18:10 225 5 171
1:5 161n, 258 19:8 152 5:13 151
5:9 161n 23:4 203 9:3 154-171
16:29 232 10:4, 19, 20 154-171
19 224 1 Kings 11 :12 171
8 :41-43 226 11 :15, 20 170
Numbers 21:10 205 11,16 178
20:22-29 259 11 :23 154, 171
25:13 259 2 Kings 17 203
26:63 259 4:23 222 17:22-24 172
7:19 203 20,22 222f.
Deuteronomy 17:24-34 229f,238 37 172,180,196
3 :23-7 :11 151 17:41 240 37:11 171
12:1 222 23:25 172n 43:7 215n
12.17f 144, 199 24:8-17 170 44:6-9 226
14:23f 144 24:14 180 44:15 243n
15:7 161 25:18 246
16:9-16 144 Hosea
17:6 205 Isaiah 1-39 2:11 (EVV, 9) 222
17:9 243n 1 :12 222, 239 2:16 (14) 152
19:15 205 1:24 151 2:17 (15) 241
21 :15 159n 5 203 14:9 245
22:1-4 232 6 154
6:9-12 238 Amos
Joshua 9:1 203
7:24 8:5 222
241
15:7 241 Jeremiah Jonah
18:3 162 2:18 245 2:3-6 192
264 INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Micah Malachi John

2:1 203 2:10-4:13 258n 2:4 245
3:1 206, 309 2:11 209
Habakkuk 4:22£ 216
3:4 203 Esdras A 11 :19 153
5:40 253
Haggai 5:67 245 Acts
1 244 9:49 253 11 :1-3 215
1:1 253 13.5 216
Esdras B 13:46 216
Zechariah 4:3 243 15 154, 215
3 259 17:18-32 217
3:1-7 243 Ecclus.
3:8 203, 246£ 49:11-13 251 Galatians
4:9 244£ 1,2 154
4:14 247n 2 Mace. 2 215
6:1-8 247 1 :18-36 254
6 :9-15 245£ I James
6:12 203 Enoch 2:23 179
7: 1-7 232 89:72 251
8:13 248 Rev.
9:9 209 New Testament 3:14 241n
9,12 143 Synoptic Gospels 205-216